Chapter 4
Tonya listened closely, doing her best to track Alan’s direction just from the sound of the bike. She didn’t move until the roar was well out of range. And even then, she remained still, taking the time to remember every detail of their discussion.
Biggest in her brain was that five-alarm body odor.
The kind that went well beyond personal hygiene and landed in skunk territory.
Which is kind of funny, Tonya thought as she brushed the dirt off her uniform, because growing up, Alan had either smelled like chlorine from the local swimming pool or Axe body spray.
And she’d spent years calling him a pretty boy.
Not something that fit now, though, but she’d never found him more appealing.
There was a ruggedness to him now that hadn’t been there when he’d dressed as a lawyer.
He’d always been tall, and thanks to his swimming, his shoulders were almost bear-shifter broad.
That inverted triangle on him? Hot. Which meant that the man looked fine in either a suit or jeans and a ripped tee.
But now he sported a five-o’clock shadow and an I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude that appealed to her sense of danger.
What could she say? She’d always had a secret longing for bad boys with an edge.
It was the grizzly in her who respected physical power, while the woman in her wanted a father of the year.
Which meant suddenly Alan was an incredibly appealing mix of Boy Scout gone bad and she was wet-her-panties attracted.
Then he’d let fly with his skunk impression.
The thing about skunks, though, was that they used their noxious spray to scare away predators.
And that’s exactly what he’d been doing: trying to scare her while he fled.
And it had worked. She’d been horrified by the smell and too confident in their history to believe that Alan would ever hit her.
Wrong.
So wrong to think he was the same sweet boy from her childhood.
So wrong to believe his captivity and torture hadn’t fundamentally changed who he was.
And a million times wrong to think that a simple come-hither smile from her would bring him home.
But she had to find him. She had to get his head screwed on right.
It went well beyond her responsibility as a cop or as beta to the Gladwin clan.
She needed him in her world. He was the last remaining point of stability in her life, and she couldn’t let him toss her away like moldy bread.
It wasn’t pride and it sure as hell wasn’t simple attraction.
It was a need that burned so hot in her gut that it frightened her. Just what would she give up to keep him in her life? And what would she do if he said no? In fact, he had said no, and she was about to risk her job and her position as beta to keep looking for him.
Sometimes, a girl just had to embrace her inner stalker.
But first she needed a diet soda. Something with extra caffeine in it because she sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep anytime soon.
She headed for the convenience mart where she grabbed some dark chocolate peanut M&M’s because there was nothing to dislike about that.
She was just paying when her phone rang.
She toyed with the idea of ignoring it, but that would only delay the inevitable. Might as well deal with it now. She stepped outside, looked at the pretty stars, and tried not to bite the head off her alpha.
“Kappes,” she answered, barking out her last name rather than hello.
“Tonya,” Carl growled into the phone, the sound both anger and relief mixed together. “Where the fuck are you?”
She turned around, looking for the address on the side of the convenience mart. In the end, she pulled the information from her memory of driving through a zillion small towns in Michigan. “Bad Axe, I think.” If Michigan was a hand, Bad Axe was near the tip of the thumb.
“What the hell? I made you my beta so you could help me here. In Gladwin.”
“I am helping,” she ground out. “I found him.”
It took him less than a second to answer, and then his voice came out filled with excitement. “Alan? When are you two getting home?”
“We’re not, Carl. He ran off. He’s different.”
She hated disappointing him. Not just because he was her alpha, but because Carl was Alan’s brother and there was a wealth of love between them. Or there had been.
“Of course—”
“No, not of course!” How did she express what she’d just seen? What she was only now starting to process? “You’re thinking of him as the same old Alan but traumatized. And he is. He’s angry and defensive. But there’s more.”
“Look, I know he’s been changed. I know he’s had his shifter DNA activated.”
“You think you know. I thought I knew. But he’s not the same person, Carl. He’s not even close.”
“That doesn’t make sense. He’s still Alan, no matter what’s been done to him.”
She thought about the way he’d shifted and the smell.
That was the surface result of what that cougar bitch had done to him.
Then she rolled through all the things he’d done recently that the normal Alan couldn’t conceive of doing, listing them off as they came to her.
“He stole a motorcycle, he’s been threatening were-cougars throughout Michigan, and he hit me. ”
There was a moment’s silence. “So he’s fast enough to surprise you.” She could hear the smirk all the way through the phone.
Not the point. “He’s strong, too. Physically, I mean.”
“These are all good things, Tonya.”
Jesus, when would men realize that the ability to do physical violence wasn’t always good?
Even Carl—as proactive and modern an alpha as she’d ever seen—wasn’t immune to the idea that physical power was always a reason to cheer.
The old Alan had taught her that wasn’t true.
If a man was capable of winning with violence, he tended to negotiate from that place first. Direct line to a win.
It was only the physically weaker ones, the ones who got their butts kicked, who started with the brain first. Who talked and thought their way through before trying to punch their way out.
But Alan had stopped being a thinking man.
He’d become an angry, violent puncher. In their short encounter, he hadn’t tried to talk to her.
What he’d said was simply a distraction until he could get into position to fight.
That was a shift from the foundation. Which meant he wasn’t the old Alan at all. Not even remotely.
And the ache of that hurt so deep in her soul that she could barely breathe. Even so, she had to make Carl understand, so she forced the words out though they cut at her on the way. “He’s not Alan anymore.”
“Bullshit.”
Tonya closed her eyes, trying to find a way through. Carl was loyal to a fault. It was part of what made him a good alpha. He never abandoned anyone. But she was the beta, which meant it was her job to handle reality, no matter what ideals Carl still clung to.
Tonya exhaled. “Look, I’m wiped and it’s a long drive home.”
“Stay up there. I’ll join you. We’ll bring him home together.”
“No.” The word came out with a quick explosion of sound. No explanation. Just a gut feeling that Carl would only make it worse simply because he wouldn’t see the truth. “He doesn’t want help. He doesn’t want to get better.”
“He needs to know that we want him home. That we’re sorry for everything.”
Damn it, the man wasn’t listening. “He knows that. He doesn’t care.”
“But—”
“Carl, do you trust me?”
Her alpha let out an aggravated sigh. “Of course I do.”
“Then let me handle this. You’ve got plenty on your plate with the Detroit shifters going psycho. People need to see you in Gladwin looking out for our own.”
“He’s my brother,” Carl ground out. “I need to—”
“Let me handle it. I can talk him around. Woman’s touch and all.”
Carl snorted. “No offense, but you’re a little late to be playing that card.”
True enough. In fact, she’d never made any claim to feminine intuition, wiles, or subtlety.
Except for some exploration of her womanly side in college, she was entirely masculine in her approach to life and had made damn sure everyone knew it.
Which made it doubly surprising to both of them that she was drawing on that now.
And she couldn’t even give a good explanation as to why.
Just that perhaps it was time. Maybe it was past time for her to be both a cop and a woman.
“Just let me try, okay?”
“Two days, Tonya. That’s it. And then I’m coming up there and dragging you both home.”
She hung up the phone rather than answer. She didn’t want to confess that she had no freaking idea how she was going to do what she promised. Or even how to find whatever shithole Alan was hiding in.
But that’s why she was a good detective. She figured stuff like that out.
Fortunately, it didn’t take her very long.
The shithole in question turned out to be a resort in Bay City.
He’d booked under the alias Harry D. S. Den.
Alan probably thought he was being clever using the name and account Carl had created for his clandestine PI work.
And truthfully, no one else would have thought to look for Alan under his brother’s alias.
But Tonya wasn’t just anybody and so she’d found him within an hour of beginning the search.
Great. Except now she had to figure out some fast talking way to get Alan off the revenge bridge and back in Gladwin where he belonged.
Problem was fast talking wasn’t in her skill set.
She was more in the do this or I’ll arrest you camp and that had already failed.
Which meant she had to lead with one of her other strengths.
The good news? Alan was in a resort that had an open gift shop.