License to Shift (3 page)

W
rong. Very wrong.

Mark stepped into the cabin—Julie's father's cabin—and immediately knew something was off. She'd opened the door, struggling with the rusty lock while he'd been looking at the clouds and wondering how long they had before the rain hit. Well, really, he'd been trying to distract himself from looking at her ass as she navigated the disaster that was her father's gravel driveway and rickety front porch. She'd been talking about packing too quickly and that she'd forgotten any type of rain gear. And then right after she'd pushed open the front door, that overwhelming sense of wrong hit him.

Immediately, he pushed her aside, stepping in front of her as he scanned the dark interior.

“What—”

“Shhhh!”

Thankfully, she took his hiss to heart and immediately quieted. He extended all his senses and wished he were in his grizzly form. He could detect so much more that way, but what he gained in awareness he lost in mental acuity. So he would remain human and protect her. But, damn it, he couldn't figure out what was wrong.

First, all the normal outdoor sounds were there. Chirping birds, rustling underbrush, even the distant bark of a dog. So nothing dangerous outside, at least as far as Mother Nature was concerned.

That meant the problem was inside. He reached behind him to flip on the light. The cabin flooded with electrical light. He heard the normal low hum of the appliances, saw the steady light on the DVR showing the time, and smelled the acrid scent of stale tea mixed with Julie's slightly floral scent.

“You came in here earlier?” he asked in a low voice.

“Yeah. Before I went to your place. What's the matter?”

“Shh. I'm trying to figure that out.”

She started to move around him, but he jerked out his hand, keeping her back. She could have pushed it, ducking under his arm or objecting, but she didn't. Smart girl. Meanwhile, he advanced a step farther into the room.

He'd been here dozens of times over the past few summers. He had a key interest in her father's research and had made a point of becoming friendly with the man. Everything looked normal for Professor Simon's home. Casually messy, but not unhealthy. There was the living area front and center with a stack of
National Geographic
magazines scattered next to the recliner. To the right was a den that had a desk facing the window and an ancient computer setup. The door into the room was open so he could see that nothing looked odd there. In the kitchen, mail was set in a neat column on the counter—probably Julie's doing—and a crumpled bag of fast food had been tossed into the half-full trash.

“Do you see anything weird? Different or out of place, maybe?” he asked her.

“No. And you're freaking me out.”

His hackles rose at the fear in her voice. His bear hated making her afraid and wanted to rip into whatever it was that made him so nervous. “Something feels wrong.”

“Can you be a little more specific?” There was an edge to her words, part sarcastic, but more anxious.

He didn't bother answering. Instead, he paced to the master bedroom. Slowly pushing open the door, he saw an unmade bed and a heap of laundry. Bathroom looked typical, too, though Julie had obviously been in there. There was an open toiletry case, and she'd thrown in toothbrush, comb, etc.

“You were packing things. For your father?” He needed to keep her talking. Her anxiety was cranking up his bear.

“Yes. And it looks exactly as I left it.”

Okay. So whatever was off probably hadn't happened recently. He left the master bedroom and climbed the stairs to the upper loft. This was the guest bedroom, and his nose twitched at the dust. No one had been up here for a while. Except that whatever was wrong lingered here, too. A scent too subtle for his human nose.

She climbed up the stairs behind him, flicking on the stairway light as she went. He looked to her. Even on high alert, he couldn't resist seeing the gentle bounce of her hair as she stepped into view. But that's when his eyes narrowed on something he hadn't noticed before.

“Stop!” he snarled, and she froze.

Pulling out his cell phone, he flipped on the spotlight, aiming it in the corner nearest the stairs. There was a thin layer of debris there, but it had been disturbed. Possibly by a large boot.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The dust has been disturbed.”

She frowned at him. “Seriously? That's a dust bunny that hasn't been cleaned in, like, a year.”

“It's not shaped right.”

She gaped at him. “Did you get a degree in forensic science after high school? Criminology? Or have you just watched a little too much
CSI
?”

He ignored her, turning his phone so the spotlight ran over the entire floor. He couldn't see a pattern. Maybe someone had been up here. Maybe he was just seeing things. “I trust my instincts.”

“Yeah, me, too. And mine say yours are crap.” She was teasing him. He could tell by the tilt of her head and the slight lilt in her voice when she spoke. He wanted to respond. Hell, he wanted to flirt and cajole and a zillion other things. But something overrode his mating instincts, and that was serious. So he didn't respond to her overture, and eventually she huffed out a breath and headed back downstairs. He couldn't blame her. He hadn't given her any reason to think he was anything but nuts. But something
nagged
at him.

Taking one last look around, he lingered on a framed picture of teenaged Julie and her father. She looked young and fresh there, kissing her father who still had his hair. It matched his memory of the girl he'd once tried to attract, but it also struck him how young she had been. Cheeks flushed, eyes bright, and everything about her alive. The present-day woman wasn't as bright. She was tired and disillusioned, her tone occasionally edging toward bitter and that saddened him. The woman had lost something that had made the teenager so vibrant.

Seeing nothing more of interest up here, he followed Julie back to the main level. She'd gone into the den to stand with her hands on her hips as she glared at the floor.

“Dad said his journals were right here,” she said pointing to the untidy desk. “But I looked everywhere.”

He followed her in, and his nose immediately twitched. “Don't move,” he ordered. She was disturbing the smells.

She gaped at him. “Is this some sad kind of come-on—”

“Out.”

She blinked. “What?”

“You're confusing the scent.” He edged to the computer and bent over to sniff the chair.

“Did you forget to take your meds?” Her voice was part exasperated, part teasing, but he could tell she was losing patience. So was he, but not with her. There was a puzzle here, and he didn't like where it was heading.

So he abruptly crossed back to her side. Even though he towered over her, she didn't do more than lift her chin and arch one eyebrow. It was an impertinent look, and his bear loved the challenge in it. The man didn't need the distraction, so he bent down, picked her up, and then set her just outside the den door. She squeaked in protest, but he moved quickly and with all his strength. By the time she had the breath to object, he had already gone back to the desk.

He was on the hunt now. It didn't matter that he was in his human form; some things were universal to both man and grizzly. In this they were the same: a singular focus when in search of prey. And since the man had vetoed chasing her, the bear allowed him to search for the unknown
wrong
that was threatening her.

Mark bent down, pushing his nose into the seat of the chair. He smelled Professor Simon as clear as day, but there was another scent. A man who liked onions and something else. Something very
wrong
. It was faint, but it was so unsettling that it turned his stomach.

He moved around the room trying to zero in on the rancid smell. It was strongest at the desk, and he returned there only to rock back on his heels in disgust. He needed another opinion. Someone who would take him seriously even if he was going crazy. He pulled out his phone and hit the third speed dial for his alpha. Maximus Carl Carman answered before the second ring.

“You okay? Where are you?”

Mark winced at the worry in his once best friend's voice. “I'm at Professor Simon's cabin. You know where it is?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm here with his daughter. I need…”
How to phrase this exactly? I need you to come sniff a chair? I need you to tell me that this is not some weirder stage of going feral? I need you to take Julie away from me before I forget myself and pin her against a wall?
In the end, he settled on the most general of statements. “I need your opinion.”

Silence. Then understanding. “You need my opinion
there
.”

Trust Carl to get it in one. “It's a weird smell,” he said. “Almost like…” His voice trailed away. He hadn't even thought of it until the words had started to form on his lips. “Before.”

“Does this have to do with the missing kids?”

A month ago, three shifter kids had gone missing—two wolves and one grizzly. Carl had saved two of them, but the psycho who'd been experimenting on them had disappeared along with a mysterious cat-shifter. The Gladwin grizzlies had been on alert ever since, but no new information had surfaced. At least not until now when Mark thought he might be smelling something similar. Hell, it was hard to tell. Meanwhile, his alpha was waiting for an answer.

“It's not the same as what I smelled then,” he said, trying to compare this to the thousands of scents that had been in the bastard's lab.

“But you suspect something.”

Maybe?
He took another whiff. “It may be nothing.”

Carl didn't need anything more. “I'm on my way. But as long as I have you on the line—”

Mark thumbed off the phone. The last thing he needed was a bunch of useless how-are-you-doing questions. And anyway, Julie was clearly getting impatient where she stood in the open doorway.

“Mind telling me what's going on?”

“Someone's been here. Someone who isn't your father.”

“Could be a lot of someones,” she said. “He interviews people here. Plus, I think he's seeing a woman.” She didn't sound upset by that. Her parents had been divorced for over a decade, so she'd had plenty of time to adjust to the change.

He nodded and pointed to the living room. “Dot doesn't come in here,” he said. “She was in the living room and kitchen.” And bedroom, but no use telling her that little tidbit. “This is different. Whoever it was did something with your dad's computer.” Probably sat here while he either copied her father's research or downloaded something onto the computer. He wouldn't know until he could get his own equipment here to check it out.

Julie wasn't buying any of it. “Look, this is all very dramatic and everything except for one thing. Nobody cares about my father's research. He tracks folktales. His own department barely cares.”

“I care,” Mark answered honestly. The man was looking into the anthropological background of shifter legends. Since Professor Simon was fully human, he called them fairy tales, but Mark knew there was a lot of truth to those old stories. From the moment the man had started asking about shape-shifter tales eight years ago, Mark had kept an eye on her father's work, hoping to find an answer to his own particular problem. But he'd only gotten personally acquainted with the man three years ago when the professor had started focusing on the bonding rituals between shifters and their mates. Fascinating stuff for a guy who was desperately trying to keep his sanity, hoping for an answer in the old tales. But he had to admit that Julie had a point. He was hard pressed to see how anyone else might be interested.

Julie shook her head. “It obviously gets really boring up here. I'm going to go pack my father's bag. You want to go sniff any more chairs? Have at it.” Then she pointed a pert, pink fingernail at him. “And find his journals!”

Mark barely resisted the urge to give her a mocking salute. Meanwhile, the first smattering of rain began. A few isolated plops on the windowpane, but it was all the warning they were likely to get. A deluge was coming soon.

“Oh, shit,” he cursed.

“What?”

“The rain. It'll wipe any evidence outside.”

“What evidence? There's been no crime!”

There was no convincing her, especially since he had plenty of his own doubts. But any hope of finding an answer outside was about to be washed away. So he headed for the door, resisting the urge to slip into his grizzly form. Last thing he needed was for her to get spooked and shoot him.

“Stay inside,” he ordered. “And stay out of the den.”

She rolled her eyes as he stepped out onto the porch. It wasn't until she shut the door on him that he realized his mistake. It came at the same moment he heard the lock snick shut.

“And don't lock me out!” he said through the door.

An evil chuckle was her only response.

Julie watched through the window and grinned as Mark sent the closed front door a frustrated grimace. She wondered if he would try the lock just in case. He didn't. Instead, he narrowed his brow and turned his intense stare to the edge of the front porch. Then he seemed to draw into himself a bit, hunching his shoulders as he took slow, predatory steps forward.

She knew that stance, recognized his focused intensity. One summer night years ago, he'd stalked her like that. He'd hunted across her body, holding her gaze as he touched her in ways she'd never dreamed were possible. And the things they'd done that night had set the bar for every lover since.

She hated seeing that look again because it reminded her that he was done with her. He hunted something else, and she was nothing to him now. But even more, she hated that it still made her insides go wet. Even her damned nipples tightened, so she turned away in disgust. Let him bang on the door. She was done with him and this horrible little town in the middle of nowhere. She'd find her father's stupid journals herself and leave before dark. And given the coming storm, it didn't look like she had much time.