Dead Heat (Taz Bell Book 1) Read online

  He nodded to me with a very neutral smile, then turned and walked away. I didn't quite sit there with my mouth open, but I sure as hell wasn't far from it. Eric had quit the task force because of what George had told him, and now he wanted to join us? All I could think of to do was silently curse the fact that George was already dead. If he hadn't been…

  My first urge was to get up and pace, a reaction I usually get when I feel cornered. I managed to stay in the chair, but switched the aim of the silent cursing to myself. How could I possibly have forgotten the number of people I wanted to avoid in this motel? Coming down to the lobby to keep from a stupid discussion with Freemont was one of the worst ideas I'd ever had, but I'd done it anyway without the least hesitation. Obviously that fuzziness I'd noticed earlier was still very much with me.

  Staying in the chair for longer than another five minutes turned out to be impossible. Visions of Grail and Jaril stopping by one after the other moved me to my feet and out the door. It was a lot hotter outside than it had been in the lobby and there was no comfortable chair to sit in, but two minutes later Allen's car turned into the parking lot. It looked like my timing might be getting back on track.

  "Good seein' you again," Allen said with a smile when I opened the door and got into the car next to him. "And it might not be very gentlemanly to say so, but the thought of catchin' up with that harpy is even better."

  "You can never go too far wrong when your priorities are in the right order," I answered with a laugh as I closed the seat belt. "Are we likely to have trouble getting the local shapeshifters to cooperate? I know you probably can't get a court order for whatever records they might have, and they most likely know the same thing."

  "How much cooperation we get depends on who's mannin' the office," Allen answered, now paying more attention to leaving the parking lot than to looking at me. "Some shapeshifters expect to get nothin' but trouble from outsiders, so they walk around with a chip on their shoulders. Others know that not all outsiders are hostile to them, so they do what they can to help. If we get too much flack in the office, we'll try one of the shapeshifters I know personally."

  Silence filled the car then, an easy silence on Allen's part, not so easy a one on mine. From time to time I'd met people who claimed to have friends who were shapeshifters, but it usually turned out to be a matter of, "some of my best friends are - ." Fill in the blank with whatever group showed how really liberal and understanding the person was, sometimes with more than one group.

  But none of those people had simply made a comment and then dropped the subject the way Allen had. He also hadn't come on to me the way I'd been dreading he would, unlike those who were "curious" about what it was like to become a "glorious child of the woods." He'd just been open and friendly, not even asking if I'd had a good night. Strangely enough, his reaction - or lack of one - made me wish even harder that I really could scream and run…

  The ride wasn't very long, not when the strip mall we drove into was on the outskirts of the city. The neighborhood wasn't the best I'd ever seen and three of the units in the line of stores were empty, but it was still a far cry from being dirty. A little rundown, yes, but not dirty. Allen and I got out of the car in front of a place that said Associate Community Headquarters, the sign and the Venetian-blind-covered front window showing that there was nothing for sale inside.

  Walking in the door showed us a wide sitting area with two couches against one of the off-white walls and chairs scattered here and there across the tile floor. There were also a few small tables, a much larger table against the wall to the right. The larger table held a coffee urn and a smaller pot that probably had just hot water, the fixings for coffee and tea - and what smelled like powdered soup - arranged around the urn and hot water unit. A fluorescent light in the ceiling chased away the dimness caused by the blinds, but all of it seemed to be wasted because there wasn't a single person in sight.

  "The offices are in the back," Allen said in a murmur as he led the way toward two doors in the back wall. "At this time of day it's not surprisin' that this outer area is deserted, but the offices shouldn't be the same."

  I made a small sound of acknowledgment as I moved toward the lefthand door a step behind Allen. There was someone behind that door, the noise of what sounded like a stapler telling me so, and then Allen knocked. The stapler sound stopped and a voice called out, "Come in."

  When I followed Allen through the door he opened it was into a small, plain office. A metal desk sat in front of a wide window with a man behind the desk, two plain, heavy plastic chairs in pale yellow arranged in front of the desk. The man who looked at us was large even sitting down, a broad face to match wide shoulders, dark hair on the long and unruly side, dark eyes unblinking and serious. Then recognition touched the face and it creased into what the man probably considered a friendly smile.

  "Hey, Art, good seein' you again," Allen said with his own smile as he moved ahead to the desk to shake hands.

  "Hey, Granger, same here," Art answered, having gotten to his feet before offering his hand. "How's it goin'?"

  By that time I'd also reached the desk, so when Allen parted his lips it was probably to introduce me to his friend Art. But his friend had suddenly dismissed Allen, all his attention abruptly centering on me. He undoubtedly knew I was a shapeshifter just as I knew the same about him, and strangely enough the smile had disappeared from his face.

  "You didn't just get into town," he said to me, having taken his hand back from Allen so he could rest both fists on the desk as he stared at me. "A good half dozen of my people reported gettin' an unfamiliar scent in places around the city, and you were out in the woods last night. Who the hell do you think you are that you didn't report here first thing?"

  "Who the hell do you think you are that I had to report to you?" I countered immediately, anger flaring so suddenly that trying to stop it was impossible. "To me you're not even as important as that desk you're leaning on, so back the hell off."

  "Who I am is leader of the area wolf pack," he growled in answer, his own anger rising. "Since we outnumber the other shifters around here, we get to make the rules. And just like most other places, visitin' or just passin' through you still report in or you end up regrettin' the oversight. You ready to report, or ready to regret?"

  I felt myself straightening where I stood, my head up to show acknowledgment of the challenge. I'd never gotten involved with any shapeshifter community, so I'd had no idea they'd put out all kinds of rules. But that was beside the point. Even under normal circumstances I'm not good at taking orders; here and now there was no way I'd back down, but I didn't have to put the decision into words.

  "Regrettin' it is, then," he growled, obviously seeing the truth in my stance and eyes. "Don't try to say later that you didn't ask for it."

  I more than half expected him to jump the desk and come at me over the top of it, but he didn't. He seemed to freeze in place, and then I felt some kind of power slam into me. It hit like that ton of bricks people used to talk about, and the next instant I couldn't breathe!

  Chapter Sixteen

  I staggered a little when that power hit me, but even as I struggled to breathe something inside me seemed to wake up. I'd never felt anything like it before, but it turned out that I didn't have to know what to do with the something. Answering power flared against what was coming at me, and then I wasn't the one having trouble breathing.

  Art staggered even more than I had, gasping at the same time, and then he'd collapsed into his chair. His eyes were wide and frightened, not to mention disbelieving, and then I heard him choke. His face was starting to turn red, probably from lack of air, and that woke me up. On the inside I'd just been gaping at him in shock, and that wasn't good. I decided I wanted that flow of power to stop, and just like that it was gone.

  Our host went boneless as he gulped frantic gasps of air, his dark-eyed stare at me so disturbed that I was probably even more bothered than he was. Nothing like that had ever happene
d to me before, but I didn't have to ask any questions. Allen had been shifting from foot to foot to my left, and now his voice broke the heavy silence.

  "What's goin' on, Art?" he asked, his tone fighting for careful neutrality. "This lady is Taz Bell, one of the rogue hunters called in to help us with a bad problem. I was just about to introduce you two when - What happened?"

  The man continued to sit with his arms hanging off the chair arms as he got his breathing under control, and only then did he straighten up again and glance at Allen.

  "No disrespect, Granger, but what happened is between shapeshifters," Art answered as he continued to stare at me instead of the man he spoke to. "But I do gotta say I never felt nothin' like that before. No wonder the - lady's a rogue hunter."

  His accent had gotten thicker, as if he'd stopped paying attention to what he'd learned in school. Getting shoved off balance does that to people, and the best thing you can do in a case like that is pretend you recovered the balance immediately.

  "We came in here for a particular reason," I told the man who couldn't seem to stop staring at me. "We're trying to locate a spotted leopard, one whose human name is James or John or something like that. Do you know the cat shifters well enough, or is there someone else we have to talk to?"

  "Francie usually comes in to tend this place with me, but today she stayed home," Art answered. "She's a cat shifter so she knows more of them personally than I do, but we both know all the shifters in this area. A spotted leopard named James or John, now… There are five leopards answering the description, but none of 'em are named James or John. Is that all you have to go on?"

  "The leopard is also very … unaggressive," I added, glad that the man seemed to be finally settling down. "He doesn't take down his own kill, he sneaks in and steals the kill of someone else without it being a challenge."

  "You know, somebody reported somethin' like that about a year ago," Art said, now looking thoughtful. "The cat shifters tried lookin' out for the sneak after that, but you know how it is durin' a full moon. It's too easy to be distracted by things or to forget what you wanted to do. When a couple of months went by and no one else reported seein' the sneak, we decided he must've just been passin' through and had left. What'd he do?"

  "Something really serious, so we have to keep this as quiet as possible," I said. "He's not the dangerous one, his … associate is, but if he's warned his associate could add to her body count. That shifter who reported the leopard a year ago… Was he by any chance a puma?"

  "A male puma?" Art asked, and when I nodded he shook his head. "The only puma in these parts is female, and that's Francie. If a male puma ever showed up she'd be doin' handsprings, that and laughin' like a crazy woman… Is any of the shit that leopard is into likely to rain all over the rest of us? If it is, I need to spread the word to my people to keep their heads down."

  "Don't say anythin' to anybody right now," Allen put in, the first words he'd spoken in quite a while. "Once we have James and his … associate I'll give you a call, and you can warn your people then. His bein' a shapeshifter might not get out, but in case it does…"

  Art nodded, a sad look in his dark eyes. He knew as well as we did that innocence doesn't protect you if someone from your particular niche in life does something bad enough. If you're Italian, you have to be a member of the Mafia, if you're black, you have to be a gangbanger or a drug dealer. The list goes on and on, long enough to cover just about everyone living.

  Allen thanked Art for his help and shook hands with him again, then the two of us left the office and walked through the empty sitting area and outside. I'd half expected Art to say something to me, but whatever "reporting" involved, he no longer seemed to be expecting me to do it.

  "I hate complete dead ends," Allen muttered once we were almost to his car. "No trace of James, and even that puma is nowhere to be found. So what do we try next? Is there anything we can try?"

  "You might try seeing how fast you can get your SWAT team together," another male voice suggested, and then George was materializing in front of me to look over the hood of the car at Allen. "It would also help to have a search warrant and an arrest warrant before we enter the house."

  "George, you found them!" I almost shouted, coming close to strangling as I tried to keep the words relatively soft. "I knew you could do it!"

  "Nothing to it - once Freemont narrowed the search area to less than a hundred miles." George was grinning as wide as his face would go, and when Allen came tearing around the front of the car he nearly charged right through George.

  "Are you sayin' you know where the harpy is?" Allen demanded in the same kind of forced-low voice I'd used. "How did you find it?"

  "I floated around the area until I saw the harpy entering a house with a man," George answered blandly, his tone telling me that he was lying in the teeth he didn't have. "You can even name me as the informant to whichever judge you go to. I'll certainly back you up."

  "Don't move," Allen ordered as he pulled out his cell phone. "I'm going to alert the SWAT team, and then I'll need the man's name and address."

  George and I exchanged a glance that was even more bland than the look George had given to Allen. My partner and I both knew that if he'd admitted to entering a house without a warrant, ghost or no ghost a judge would probably get up on a high horse. By claiming he saw the "suspects" entering the house George avoided the problem, so getting the warrants ought to be a lot easier. If the day ever comes that technicalities become less important than innocent lives instead of more important, lying will become a lot less necessary.

  When Allen asked for the address George gave it to him, and a couple of minutes later the detective closed his phone and turned back to us.

  "That house belongs to a man named James Elbinon, the only survivin' child of someone who used to have a lot of power in this part of the state," Allen reported. "Will Elbinon and his wife, along with two other sons and a daughter, were killed in a train wreck about ten years ago. Elbinon had his own car fitted out like a hotel suite, and he was on his way to do some politickin' when the accident happened. He'd let himself be talked into runnin' for the U.S. Senate, and after the rest of the family was wiped out there was no one but James to inherit all the money. But not the political clout."

  "Why not?" George asked, his frown clear. "Being his father's son means he also had the father's name, and too often it's the name people vote for, not the man or woman wearing it."

  "They probably dropped him for the same reason he wasn't with his family when they died," I suggested when Allen just shrugged. "He was being hidden from the public eye because his father - or mother - had ruined him too badly to allow him to be seen with the rest of the family. Judging from the way he behaved last night, he's been turned into someone who sees himself as incapable of doing anything without lots of help. That kind of thing doesn't happen unless the person is actually brain-damaged - or made to believe he is by the people who were supposed to love him."

  "I've seen that more than once myself," Allen said, and now he looked and sounded depressed. "It's even possible that James became a shapeshifter on purpose, thinkin' that would make life better for him. But from what I'm told, life among shapeshifters isn't anythin' like easy. James couldn't bring himself to do the necessary, so things became worse instead of better."

  "And then he got that harpy egg," George put in, nodding thoughtfully. "Instead of killing him she became his protector, not to mention the one who avenged any insults sent his way. If I wasn't able to see the situation getting even worse than it is right now, I'd be tempted to feel sorry for the poor fool."

  "I already feel sorry for him, but that doesn't mean I won't arrest him once the harpy is dead," Allen said after taking a deep breath and then letting it out. "Assumin' he survives our assault on his house, that is. We'll be meetin' the SWAT team about a block away from the address George gave me, so let's get goin' before they decide to go in without us."

  We didn't have to be told
that twice, so we all piled into Allen's car and left the strip mall. I half expected Allen to put a light on his car to get traffic out of his way, but he didn't. He must have realized that we were sneaking up on James, so doing anything to announce our approach would be foolish.

  We actually reached the place we were going to meet the SWAT team first, but only by a matter of seconds. As we pulled over to the curb a large van came around the far corner, with a number of vehicles following behind it. We were out of Allen's car and had walked around to the back of the van by the time the other vehicles began to empty. The SWAT team was assembled just about instantly, but we weren't yet ready to get closer to our target.

  "Yes, I have the warrants, but no, we aren't ready to get started yet," the SWAT team leader stated as he looked Allen and me over, answering Allen's questions. "If you two are comin' along with us, you need vests, ear pieces and microphones, and heavier weapons than handguns."

  "No argument," I said before the sudden frustration on Allen's face pushed him into denying a real need. "And once we have all those things, you and your team need to be told just what we'll be going up against. And what needs to be done to keep as many of us alive as possible."

  "You sound like you've done this before," the man said, now looking at me with more of his attention. "I'm Newsom, Dan Newsom."

  "Nice to meet you, Dan, I'm Taz Bell," I said, accepting the hand he put out to me. His grip was on the firm side, and it wasn't hard to see he was trying to find out if I'd cry or back down. When my smile didn't waver and I didn't start to crush his hand in response, he gave a small nod and let my hand go.