Chapter Seventeen
Bellamy and Barrett entered the cabin looking like they were about to attend a funeral.
“What’s going on?” I asked and cringed immediately. This was my case.It was my literal job to know everything that was going on. I should’ve been able to solve this case on my own, like I had dozens of times in the forest.
The more I tried to talk Synamon out of bringing Ellie back from the dead and walking into that courtroom with guns blazing, the more she’d doubled down.
Being here with her in this cabin had distorted my view of reality. Constantly intoxicated by her berry vanilla scent, watching her every move like it was my own private Only Bears performance...I was getting comfortable. Forgetting there was danger.
Barrett cocked a brow. “You haven’t heard the news?”
I glanced at Synamon, who shrugged and shook her head.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Bellamy suggested, and his gaze fixed on Synamon as she settled. “Are you familiar with an Only Bears performer named Velvet Ransom?”
Synamon’s face brightened. “Yeah, we’re friends—well, maybe not friends, but we talk shop behind the scenes. She was on the bill at The Stepchild--” she gasped. “Did something happen to her?”
Barrett bowed his head, and knotted his fingers together. He looked up and his eyes were dark. Feral. “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you she was found dead this morning.”
“No!” Synamon clapped her hand over her mouth. With that, she took all the oxygen in the room. “Sweet moon, what happened?”
“We’re in contact with her local police department, but it’s still an active investigation,” Bellamy said.
“Why are you in contact with them?” Synamon’s gaze darted back and forth between Barrett and Bellamy. “What do you know that you’re not telling me?”
She was in shock. Of course she was. I wanted to take her into my arms and whisper into her hair that it would be okay. That everything would work out, her friend wasn’t really dead, and that I could keep her safe. But for so many reasons, I couldn’t do that.
“We’re not hiding anything from you, El-Synamon,” Barrett corrected himself. I’d advised them to call her by her stage name when I called this meeting. “We’re hoping you can help us fill in some blanks so we can put the pieces together. What can you tell us about Velvet’s platform?”
“She was one of the first performers I had the guts to reach out to,” she said, voice shaking with emotion.
“She does—did—burlesque bedtime stories, and I loved them because they were flirty and campy but left something to the imagination. Exactly what I wanted to do with Synamon. At first, I was so envious of her platform. Her fans have a name—the Velveteers. To me, that meant she’d made it.
But she was so welcoming. She showed me the ropes, taught me how to engage with my fans. ”
“Did you have fans in common?” Bellamy asked.
“I’m sure we did—we shouted each other out all the time.” She let out a shaky sigh. “Do you think the Centerfold Slasher was after her that night, and not me?”
“He might have been. Or there could have been more than one performer in his sights. Whether she was his target or not, it doesn’t change that someone tried to abduct you,” Bellamy said much more calmly than I could have.
“She also had a ‘Justice for Synamon’ campaign on her page. Had you talked with her since you’ve been here? ”
Synamon narrowed her eyes. “If you knew we were friends, why did you ask if we were?”
“Because we wanted your perspective,” Barrett said. “To see if you knew anything we didn’t.”
“Feels like a trick question.” She crossed her arms, and her walls went up. “Not sure I can trust you.”
“Did Velvet ever tell you about fans that went too far?” I asked, trying to smooth things over before Synamon went fully feral and shut down. Barrett and Bellamy were on the brink of losing her when the stakes were highest.
“She told me some things to look out for. But I think I was a little more forgiving than some performers,” she said with a shrug. “Maybe because it was my space to be wild too. I didn’t want anyone digging too deep into what I was doing, so I returned the favor.”
Bellamy pulled out his tablet and swiped the screen. “We took a look into some of the forums where your fans gather.”
“What forums?” She barked out the question. “We don’t have forums on Only Bears.”
“That’s a great question, because I thought the same thing,” Bellamy said.
“I got in touch with The Real Werewives’ production staff.
They have a very active forum community, and I asked Stephanie how men behaved differently than women.
She tipped me off to the fact they gather in different places.
Away from the official sites, where they aren’t bound to rules. ”
He handed Synamon the tablet. She scrolled slowly, her expression a combination of recognition and betrayal.
“Whoa,” she said softly. “They don’t even change their usernames.”
Bellamy’s face brightened. “You recognize some of those names?”
“Most of them.” She sighed in disgust and then grinned. “At least they’re not talking shit.”
Bellamy moved to sit beside Synamon, and my bear rumbled. He wasn’t a threat, but my animal didn’t want anyone near his mate.
“What about this one?” He tapped the screen.
Synamon tipped her head and furrowed her brow. “I don’t recognize that one.”
Now it was Bellamy’s turn to rumble. “We traced that one back to the same location of a burner phone that contacted Brad.”
“What? When?” I pulled my phone out of my pocket.
“Three days ago,” Barrett said. “We were hoping that was what you wanted to talk to us about.”
“Someone called when I was performing for you,” Synamon reminded me. “Pour Some Sugar on Me.”
“Jen called.”
Her brow furrowed, her expression turned incredulous. “Wait, my best friend called you and I’m just finding out about this now?” She rose from the couch. “I thought you were different, Brad. I trusted you.”
She headed toward the door.
“Synamon, wait.” I put myself between me and the door. I was bigger than her, stronger. But this woman could and very much would figure out how to get past me.
This was a woman who’d weaponized being underestimated and I couldn’t be shocked I was now the one staring down the barrel of that gun.
She crossed her arms, and shifted her weight to her back foot as she sized me up.
“This better be good,” she said, giving me the in I so desperately needed.
“Ellie had disappeared. That was the plan,” I reminded her. “You agreed to it, because you could still be Synamon and protect your identity. So when your best friend called and pleaded with me to find you, I had to pretend you weren’t in the next room.”
Synamon squeezed her eyes closed. “You could’ve told her.” The words were barely more than a whisper. “Jen knows I’m Synamon. She’s the only person that does. So if Synamon is posting and you didn’t tell her you were guarding me, of course she's panicked."
“It’s probably better that you didn’t say anything.” Bellamy rose from his seat and joined us. “We have reason to believe that you didn’t actually talk to Jen.” He swiped his tablet and handed it to Synamon.
Stepping closer to her to read over her shoulder felt like a potentially explosive move. That delicious berry scented heat rolled off her as we took in the information.
“Care to decipher?” I asked.
“Love to,” Bellamy said. “But maybe we should sit down? It’s a lot.”
My bear rumbled. I should’ve been the one to suggest that.
Synamon’s energy turned to stone. “Maybe we can do it right here.”
“Bellamy is the best cyber forensics investigator in the business.” Barrett joined our cluster at the door, like he fully realized how close we were to losing Synamon. “He’s been working hard on your case, and--”
“What, I owe it to him to listen?” Synamon braced herself.
“Look, I understand there are some bad guys on the loose, and one of them got into my apartment, but my life has completely fallen apart since Sawtooth Security entered the picture. I can’t lose Jen.
” Her eyes squeezed closed again. “I’m not gonna be quiet about this. ”
Barrett and Bellamy looked at each other—and I was moments from losing them too.
“We’re trying to give you your life back. Maybe for the first time,” I said. I wanted to touch her so badly, but the pure venom running though her veins could be lethal on contact. “You and Bellamy are more alike than you think. You both love rules and using them as weapons.”
That got her to soften.
She wants to believe you, my bear said. Keep going. Give her something to believe in.
“And you’re both, dare I say it, smarter than the average bear.” I grinned as she rolled her eyes. “And you’ll both go the distance to make sure the bad guy doesn’t win.”
Synamon shifted her gaze to Bellamy. “Those are pretty admirable qualities.”
“After he explains what he’s found, you have every right to call bullshit,” I continued. “Or maybe he’ll help us put the pieces together and you don’t have to live in fear anymore.”
She threw her shoulders back. “I’m not afraid of anything.” And then strutted over to the couch like it was the beginning of her latest performance.
Barrett gave me the most bewildered expression I’d ever seen from him.
“Damn,” he whispered.
I nodded at him, but the reality was, I was swelling with pride. Synamon Honey didn’t let anyone intimidate her. She lived all aspects of life on her own terms.
Mate, my bear said.
Bellamy, as advertised, saw the narrow window he had to win Synamon over and got to work. He took the seat across from her and leaned forward.
“We’ve been going through the Synamon Honey forums away from Only Bears, of course. But that wasn’t all. We looked at the Centerfold Slasher forums. With the rise in true crime enthusiasts, that’s a pretty active space too.”
“But you just said that you weren’t sure the Slasher was after me.” Synamon’s trust hadn’t been earned yet.
“Do you think a copycat killer could be after the Only Bears performers?” I asked.
“We were looking for similar usernames, of course. But what I was most interested in was patterns. They can change their name and their IP address, but everyone has a unique cadence to their messages. Quirks that are hard to mimic or suppress because they’re so ingrained. We found some matches--”
“What does this have to do with Jen?” Synamon interrupted. This time it wasn’t out of annoyance, but pure fear. Which was a good sign. She was taking the Sawtooth Security team seriously. “She’s got little kids. They can’t get dragged into this.”
Bellamy nodded. “We’ve been watching her too. She’s okay, and her kids are safe. It’s also how we know she didn’t make that phone call. Because when it came in, she was at soccer practice.”
Synamon’s face lit up, her relief so strong I could practically drink it. We hadn’t told Bellamy that Jen coached. There was no need to.
“Then who is this fucker?” she asked.
“That’s what we’re hoping you can help us with.” Bellamy handed her the tablet again. “We had a feeling they’d try to get to you through Jen, because, simply put, Jen’s a great friend.”
“Ride or die,” Synamon confirmed.
“We’ve got bears watching her and her family, so I can absolutely confirm she’s safe--”
“Wait, does she know this?” Her tone was laced with panic. “Because her husband doesn’t know about Synamon.”
I rumbled, and Barrett nodded in solidarity. If Jen’s husband wasn’t already on the suspect list he needed to be added to it immediately.
“All completely undercover,” Bellamy assured her.
“But there were signatures in the call that aligned with a profile that shared signatures with those posts. So we thought about who would know that Jen was Synamon’s best friend, and we cross checked the post against public files that were issued by your City Hall.
Of course, the punctuation quirks would be mostly edited out, but we found enough to think a coworker of yours may be responsible for the posts and impersonating Jen on the phone. ”
Synamon’s lips parted but she was frozen in place, like she was willing time to leave her behind.
“You’re saying someone at work is onto me.”
“Unfortunately, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Bellamy confirmed.
She turned to me. “Brad, I have to testify.”
Barrett furrowed a brow. “We don’t think that’s a good idea, Synamon. I hate it as much as you do, but your safety--”
“Is it more important than all the shifters who’d lose the only home they’d ever known?
” The words came out in a growl. “I hid Synamon because I was scared. People thought she was a joke. I let people think they were walking all over Ellie. Let them use words like hard ass and bitch like it was a weakness. It’s time to show everyone what strength actually looks like. ”