Chapter Eight
RILEY
The report Riley finally sent to Amy wouldn’t keep her happy for long, sparse on facts as it was, but at least it would buy him breathing space.
He was going to break this story wide open because he wouldn’t accept any other alternative.
He just needed her to give him enough time.
He also needed to kill that lingering doubt in the back of his mind, the one that said she’d sent him on a wild goose chase as an excuse to get rid of him when he failed.
He closed his laptop with a firm click. Amy wouldn’t need an excuse to sack him—she’d just tell him to gather his stuff and get out.
She’d been less than pleased when he’d been parachuted into the newsroom as a completely rookie journalist, whose only talent was in sucking the right person’s dick to get the job.
She hadn’t known that last part, of course, and had either believed he had the talent for investigation he claimed, or didn’t care enough to give Riley more than a second’s thought.
He grabbed a couple of ancient peanut butter crackers and a bag of Doritos from the vending machine in the lobby, ate a lonely dinner in his depressing room, and then headed out.
Nerissa Taylor had mentioned a couple of bars to him, and he’d given the news of his arrival in town enough time to circulate.
He wanted to ask questions and finally get some of those answers he was after.
He wasn’t sure if he’d find shifters in the bars.
Didn’t they spend their nights as wolves?
Then he remembered that the source who’d tipped them off about the Argent in Elk Ridge had been a shifter and gotten himself knifed in a bar fight, so clearly they didn’t spend all their time running wild in the woods.
Maybe it didn’t matter if he found shifters tonight. Locals who weren’t shifters might be more useful. They’d know who the shifters were, and a drink or two would persuade most to share any gossip.
He barely made it two steps inside the first bar before the smell of cheap beer hit him. The place was crowded with college-age kids, already three drinks deep and way too loud. There was little chance of getting information here.
Before he could retreat, he had to gently unpeel the girl who’d already latched onto his arm, babbling about football. Once he got a blast of fruity vodka on her breath, he made sure to hand her back to her friends, rather than leave her to be picked up by one of the frat bros who were circling.
A few hundred yards down the street, a blue neon sign announced the presence of The Blue Oyster.
Wondering who the hell came up with the name, Riley pushed through the door to find himself in a dimly lit bar with old-school country playing quietly.
It was the sort of place a man could nurse a drink instead of chugging it.
Figuring this was much more promising for his needs, he sat at the bar and ordered a beer.
It turned out every small-town movie he’d watched was a lie, because the middle-aged guy behind the bar didn’t instantly fall into conversation with him. Instead, he handed over Riley’s beer without missing a beat in his conversation with other customers.
Riley sat and sipped occasionally at his beer, wondering if it would be too rude even for an investigative journalist to break in on the conversation.
It wasn’t only his investigative side that had him wanting to interrupt—some numbskull was claiming the Chevelle SS was the best car America had ever produced.
He only realized he was shaking his head when the guy closest to him turned and spoke. “I know, right? Can’t beat a ’68 Charger.”
“With the Hemi,” Riley clarified. “Pure sex on wheels.”
“Damn straight,” the guy said. “I’m Cole, and that damn fool who knows nothing about cars is Lennox.”
Lennox was a big guy in his fifties, with broken veins in his cheeks that meant he either spent a lot of time outdoors or with a drink in his hand. Or maybe both. Cole was a few years younger, his blond hair turning to gray, and talkative. Make that very talkative.
Chuck—the guy behind the bar, whose thoughts on cars were almost as criminal as Lennox’s—kept the beer flowing as Cole talked, and Riley began to relax.
He wasn’t a car guy, but he knew enough to pass for one.
And as the evening wore on, he realized that, for the first time in a long time, he was enjoying something.
He’d been welcomed, made to feel part of something. Almost as if he belonged.
With guys decades older than him, with whom he had nothing in common? Jeez, he was pathetic.
“Keys, Cole.” Chuck held his hand out over the bar.
Riley blinked at Chuck, slow to catch on.
“Jesus, it’s just up the damn road,” Cole protested.
“Far enough to kill someone or get yourself arrested.”
“Fucking Urban,” Cole growled. “Lawson would never have stopped a man driving home just because he’d had a beer.”
“Lawson ain’t sheriff now,” Chuck said. “Keys, Cole. I don’t aim to be visiting you in lockup. Or the morgue.”
“Fucking shifters,” Cole grumbled, finally tossing his keys on the bar. “It’s unnatural, the way they are.”
Unnatural. The word sat there, thick and heavy in the air. Like shifters were monsters.
Riley’s spine stiffened. He’d almost forgotten why he was here. It was a reminder how important his story was and what was at stake if he didn’t break it, didn’t stop Urban’s plans.
“Your sheriff’s a shifter?” he asked, keeping his voice mild.
“For now,” Lennox muttered into his beer.
“What Lennox means,” Chuck said, a little too fast, “is that elections are coming up.” He didn’t look at Lennox when he said it.
“No one in their right mind’s gonna vote for one of them again,” Lennox said. His voice had dropped low but sounded ugly.
“Must be interesting, having a shifter as sheriff when most of the town’s human,” Riley said.
“You’re telling me,” Cole snorted. “This used to be a decent place. Now it’s full of mongrels.”
Riley flinched. He covered it by taking a swig of his beer.
“That’s enough, Cole.” Chuck smacked the bar hard. “I don’t give a shit how much you’ve had. You don’t talk like that in my place.”
Cole sneered but didn’t argue. Riley guessed in a town this small, even a bigot had to watch who he pissed off.
“Sorry about that,” Chuck said, with a forced smile at Riley. “You want another?”
“Sure,” Riley accepted. He waited until Chuck moved down the bar to serve someone else before asking any more questions. Seemed like Chuck was a shifter-sympathizer and would shut him down.
“So how many shifters are there in town?” he asked Lennox. “And how can you tell if they’re a shifter or a normal person?” Because he still hadn’t found a way to identify a shifter on sight, no matter how long he’d trawled online for suggestions.
“’Sides the collar and leash, y’mean?” Lennox barked a harsh laugh. “Can’t tell them apart by sight, but we know ’em, the ones here. You will too, if you stick around long enough.”
Before Riley could ask anything further, Chuck was back, and the damn man stayed there jawing away about cars until Cole and Lennox both decided to call it a night.
Damn it. Well, Riley would just have to come back again tomorrow night. As he finished his beer, he realized that part of him didn’t want to. He hadn’t expected to encounter such open anti-shifter hostility, and it left him feeling… like he needed to shower, actually.
Riley had his reservations about shifters, sure—who didn’t?
He’d grown up with stories about out-of-control alphas and coverups.
And God knew, he didn’t trust any man who had the power of law and a pack behind him.
But listening to people spew that kind of vicious hatred made Riley feel like maybe he’d been swimming in dirty water too long to realize how murky it was.
It was the ease with which they’d used those words, in public, like talking about shifters as less than people wasn’t shocking anymore.
He wondered if they’d have been so welcoming if they knew he was gay.
Guys like that rarely kept their bigotry in one lane.
His father sure hadn’t—raging about shifters taking over one minute, and disowning Riley the next. Different targets, same poison.
He’d never liked the way shifters operated—so much secrecy, so much deference to their alpha—but maybe that was the problem. Maybe not liking it had made it easier to overlook how dark things had gotten. Or maybe things had always been that way, and he’d never looked too closely.
Still, he couldn’t quite let go of the thought that in that first bar, the noisy one packed with college kids and trashy cocktails, no one would blink at the idea of dancing beside a shifter. Maybe the next generation would fix what the last had broken. Maybe they were already trying.
That didn’t make what he’d heard tonight any less vile.