Hidden Crimes (7 page)

Nate had jumped to his feet in front of
Adam’s desk. He was a hair’s breadth from encroaching into his
boss’s space.

“Look,” Adam began in a conciliatory tone.
Nate was so infuriated he wanted to sock him. Sensing this, Adam
patted the air. “Put the description she gave you into Missing
Persons. If we get a hit, we’ll proceed from there.”

Nate had already done this from his home
unit, and was waiting on the results. That didn’t seem diplomatic
to admit right then. “I want to pursue this,” he said instead.

Adam let out a sighing breath.

“Give me Carmine,” Nate insisted, knowing the
older man was the only detective Adam might be willing to pull off
the Galina case. Carmine was a good solid cop, but not what you’d
call brilliant. Nate didn’t care about that. Carmine’s belly laugh
and easy manner had a way of disarming witnesses. “Carmine can
coordinate a door-to-door around the blanket factory. See if any
vagrants or shopkeepers saw our trio of doctors. It wouldn’t hurt
to canvas the area anyway—in case the dumpsite doesn’t pan out the
way you want. Vasili was holed up there for a while.”

“Fine,” Adam said. “You can have Carmine and
two uniforms. Make sure you don’t waste them. I might need to pull
them back again.”

“Thank you,” Nate said, possibly conveying
more exasperation than gratitude. He didn’t ask if Adam wanted to
speak to Evina personally. He already knew the answer to that.

~

The fact that Nate’s boss thought Evina
couldn’t be trusted didn’t seem like news he ought to share by
phone. Because it was past eleven, when she’d mentioned her shift
started, he made the ten-minute drive out to Company Number 5.

He parked across the street half a block from
their garage bay. This was where their lime-green tiger-striped
fire trucks would pull out. Evina’s station owned two apparatuses.
The first was a pumper. As Nate understood it, pumpers increased
the pressure of hydrant water, to ensure it would blast from hoses
onto a blaze. The second truck was a lengthy ladder and platform
deal, designed for attacking fires or entering buildings from high
floors.

The pup in Nate was excited to be close to
these life-size toys. The man in him preferred the prospect of
sniffing around Evina. From the moment he’d seen her behind her
cart at the Holy Foods, his sexual antenna had been hyper-tuned to
her. His pulse quickened as he left his car, his outlook
brightening in spite of the awkwardness of his errand.

A second later, he realized seeing her wasn’t
going to be simple.

A tiger were the size of a refrigerator was
working in the bay. He was folding a soft-sided hose so that it
accordioned neatly into a compartment on the truck. The taut set of
his giant shoulders told Nate the tiger knew a stranger was
approaching.

“You can’t park there,” the firefighter said
without bothering to turn his head.

The implication that Nate posed no threat was
a classic wereanimal insult.

“There’s no sign,” Nate said, taking in the
man’s height and build. He was bigger than Nate’s packmate
Rick—6’7” if he was an inch and equally muscle-bound. He could
bench press Nate without effort but wouldn’t be as fast. This
knowledge was in his voice as he continued. “I made sure your
trucks would be able to get by if they went out in that
direction.”

The man tucked up the last of the hose and
turned. His hair was strawberry gold and wavy, his skin a rosy
cream color. Many weretigers were of Indian descent but not all.
This fellow looked like a Celt to him. When he spoke, a growl
rolled under his voice.

“You misunderstand me, dog.
You
can’t
park anywhere near here.”

A grin broke across Nate’s face. He wasn’t
any more afraid than if this had been his pack’s beta. Nate knew
how good he was at hand-to-hand. Civilized or not, some big lunk
spoiling for a tussle put him in his happy place.

“I
can
park there,” he said, “and I
have. If you want a piece of me for that, by all means give taking
one a shot.” Enjoying this, he spread his hands and grinned more
broadly, his fingers beckoning the other on.

The fireman lunk measured Nate scornfully
with his gaze, tiger gold bleeding into Irish blue. He rolled onto
the balls of his feet and tucked in his shoulders, clearly
preparing to pounce into an attack. Laughing silently to himself,
Nate thought:
here, kitty!
Then the tiger did the last thing
he expected. Rather than spring, he blinked twice and backed off.
Nate’s game-for-anything attitude had averted fights before, but
guys this big didn’t generally give up so fast.

“Huh,” the fireman said, the sound of
dismissal at least half cat. He narrowed his eyes at Nate, as if
suspecting the wolf had played a trick on him. “Don’t be planning
to park there long.”

“I won’t,” Nate promised, his meekness almost
sincere. “Is your boss around?”

The tiger’s eyes slitted more. “Evina is in
her office.”

Though Evina was this pride’s alpha, as a
female she’d be considered a pride possession—one they’d
instinctively do anything to defend. Nate walked through the garage
bay with the awareness that hostile eyes followed him. It didn’t
seem wise to challenge his watchers by staring directly, but he
couldn’t help noticing every cat he passed was as massive as the
first guy.

Evidently, when it came to the RFD, runts of
the litter need not apply. Females weren’t barred from serving if
they could pass the physical, but except for her, Evina’s crew was
male.

He was a bit surprised when he completed
their gauntlet without trouble.

Well
, he thought, passing into an
empty sitting area.
That was interesting
.

Inhabited as it was by felines, the
building’s smell caused Nate’s wolfish nose to twitch. The aroma
wasn’t unpleasant—musky, he guessed—and not what he was used to.
The lounge-type furniture wasn’t bad. Secondhand and worn out by
large bodies, heaps of colorful pillows brightened it. Nate’s inner
neat freak approved of how clean the place was underneath its
slight messiness. Rick and Tony were way bigger slobs than
this.

A station house run by cats did have its
upside.

He ascended a set of wooden stairs within the
big open space. The steps led to an enclosed office, or maybe
perch
was a better word. Like Nate’s boss Adam, Evina worked
with her door open. Metal support columns were the only barrier
between the lounge space and the garage. From her big square
window, she could view everything.

She didn’t seem to have watched him run her
men’s gauntlet. She was on the phone leaning on one elbow, her
graceful hand shielding her pretty eyes. Knowing she must have
heard him by then, Nate waited politely outside the door.

She ended the call soon after and looked at
him. Although she seemed curious about his presence, she gestured
him to a guest chair whose seat had been repaired with bright blue
duct tape. Patch job notwithstanding, it was more comfortable than
Adam’s.

“That was the hospital,” she said. “One of my
men suffered third degree burns yesterday. The doctors are trying
to adjust his pain meds so that he’s not too drugged to change.
He’s expected to make a good recovery, once he can manage
that.”

“I’m sorry,” Nate said, wincing at the
thought of not being able to heal such serious injuries. “Is there
anything I can do?”

The question came out automatically. Nate saw
it surprised Evina. She widened her lustrous eyes at him. “Not
unless you can compel another shifter to change form. I’m afraid
that’s not among my gifts.”

“My alpha can do it sometimes,” Nate said,
“but as far as I know, his influence only works on wolves.”

“Your alpha . . .”

Nate smiled, glad redressing her earlier
misconception had been easy. “Yes. As it happens, I have a beta
too.”

“I thought . . .” She trailed off.

“I know. I realized last night. Believe me,
I’m flattered.”

She shifted in her swiveling chair, her eyes
considering him in a similar fashion to her hulking Irish guard
cat. “I’m surprised. You give off quite the aura of
confidence.”

“I’m confident about a lot of things,” Nate
said, not quite straight-faced.

She blushed, delighting the most masculine
part of him. “Yes,” she said dryly. “I noticed that.”

She pulled one foot up onto her chair,
hugging her shin with both arms. Her foot was bare, her shin clad
in worn blue jeans. Something about the pose, or maybe the curry
orange polish on her toenails, gave Nate an instant erection.

“Why are you here?” Evina asked, seeming
unaware of this. “I expected you to call.”

“Ah.” With one finger, Nate scratched his
cheek in embarrassment. “It appears my alpha doesn’t find your
vision of what happened in that secret operating room as compelling
as I do.”

“He can’t be planning to ignore it.”

Nate shrugged uncomfortably. “He doesn’t
think what you saw is evidence of a crime.”

“Well, fuck,” Evina said, the word too hard
for her lush soft mouth. “
You’re
not going to ignore it,
surely.”

“No. I convinced him to give me a detective
and a couple uniforms. They’ll canvas the area around the factory.
Hopefully, someone will have seen something.”

“And the child’s description?”

“I’m afraid I came up empty-handed at Missing
Persons. No one’s reported a shifter child that age disappearing in
the last eighteen months. They’ll check farther back, but I’m not
holding my breath.”

“Those psychic impressions I read were
fresh,” Evina said firmly. “Not more than a few months old.”

She jumped up and began to prowl the width of
her office behind her desk. She reminded him of her tigress, the
sight of which had enchanted him last night. She was more than
wild; she was shifter sex on two legs. Muscles moved in her body
that had him imagining her in bed. His hard-on shifted from
uncomfortable to raging. He ordered himself not to tug his trousers
and draw her eyes to it.

When she stopped and faced him dead on,
excitement slapped through his blood. She’d come around the desk
and was only feet from him.

“We’ll go to the media,” she said. “My
mother’s dating a news producer at WQSN. Non-wolves don’t always
report trouble to the cops. A direct appeal for information could
generate some leads.”

Nate considered. WQSN was Resurrection’s
third largest TV network. Their all-shifter soap operas were very
popular.

“A sketch of the boy you saw would help,” he
said, shoving aside his awareness of how ticked his alpha was going
to be if they did this behind his back. “I know an artist who could
work with you on one.”

“Good.” Evina smiled ferally at him.

She stood in front of him, her bare feet
planted, her fists pushing at her waist. The teeth her smile bared
seemed especially white and sharp. To him, she was a miniature
Valkyrie.

A tiger queen
, he corrected. One any
male would be privileged to surrender to.

“I want to fuck you so bad I hurt,” he
blurted.

She jerked, startled by his bluntness—as he
was himself. Nate usually played his seduction cards more smoothly.
A second later, her lovely bosom went up and down. Nate realized
the tips of her breasts were sharp. That spurred a surge of heat he
didn’t know how to squelch. Luckily, he didn’t have to.

Evina reached down, grabbing him by the
skinny tie he wore with his black silk shirt. “Come with me,” she
said huskily.

His hormones went haywire. Skin humming with
arousal, he fought not to stumble as she tugged him onto his feet.
Stronger than her size would suggest, she pulled him to her desk
and around it. In his current panting state, he was
almost
willing to cast caution to the winds and let her take him on top of
it, in clear view of her oversized pride members. His pretty hide
was grateful when a panel in her rear wall swung open. The hidden
door revealed a small private compartment.

“Welcome to my kitty hidey hole,” she
purred.

He caught a glimpse of tufted saffron-colored
leather, which padded both walls and floor. The floor was no more
than three foot square, not big enough to lie down unless you were
as small as she was and curled up. To want a private space like
this must have been a cat thing. At the moment, the lack of size
didn’t matter. Evina shoved the door closed behind them. A light
came on, an exotic bazaar-style lantern dangling from a chain
above.

“Rrr,” she said—part funny, part serious—as
she slammed him unresisting against the wall. The little growl
skipped along the nerves of his penis, making it thrum and throb.
By this point, his cock was hard enough to pound railroad spikes.
He reached for her bottom to pull her softness closer. She groaned
as he hitched her up.

Nate wondered if a person could die of
thankfulness.

“No one can blame me for this,” she said.
“Wolf or not, you are too damned yummy.”

When her lips seized his and her hard-tipped
breasts flattened against his chest, Nate decided no one could
blame him either.

~

Evina’s memory hadn’t exaggerated his skill
at kissing, or how hard his lean body was. He pulled her up him
effortlessly, big hands arranging her thighs around his trim
waist.

That done, he kneaded her bottom
enticingly.

Her pussy tightened at the press of the bulge
that stretched his trouser front. God, he was big—and exactly what
she needed. The ache inside her had been building ever since he
arrived. Now her head fell back, and Nate kissed a licking,
stinging path down her neck. He was almost biting her, almost
sucking hard enough to leave marks.

This should have dismayed her, but every
nerve she had sang with excitement. Her hands tightened on his
shoulders, so wide, so spare of any cushioning but muscle. She
rolled her pubis over his large hard-on, hungry to stimulate both
herself and it. Nate grunted and shoved his crotch at her
harder.