Aedan: Harrison Ambush – Erotic Tiger Shapeshifter Romance (3 page)

Chapter 2

Otis looked around the war room that he’d had set up to find the fucking cop. Maps, notes, and anything else that they could think of were marked on large sheets of paper that had been brought in. Places where they had thought she might be but wasn’t were marked, as well as other places to check. So far, nothing. He wasn’t sure where else they could look. Otis thought for sure she was dead—they’d certainly fired enough bullets into her body—but what they should have done was put one between her eyes and been done with it. Whatever had happened to her body while she laid there was anyone’s guess. She had simply disappeared.

“We’ve been by her grandfather’s place several times since we went by to talk to him, and nothing. No one in any hospital has seen him, no animal doctors, not even any would be doctors have had any suspicious men in to be worked on. I know that he can’t be up and around for long. He took at least two shots from my gun for sure. It’s like the girl. Just gone.” Otis nodded, but said nothing to his man, Joe. “I have a theory, if you want to hear it.”

“I do, but in a minute. Let me tell you what I think, and then we can add to it with your theory. I’m thinking that they’re not together. Whoever took them, and I’m thinking it’s just one person, he would have had to separate them so that we’d not have them where we want them. I’ve also been thinking that perhaps she might not be dead. You said yourself that there wasn’t enough blood left behind for her to be over the fucking rainbow. So, like the grandfather, she’s getting medical care somewhere. But where?”

“She had to have a vest on. It’s the only thing that fits.” That was what Otis thought now too. Christ, the woman acted like everyone was out to get her. “Oh, and we can’t find her phone. I’m pretty sure you were right in saying that she was flashing pictures of all of us. That alone will get us all in deep shit. I’m almost afraid to think who might have that now.”

“You’ve not said anything to anyone about that, have you?” He said that he hadn’t and wouldn’t. “Good. What is it you think happened to her? And the other Neal?”

“Vamp.” Otis turned and looked at him. His fear of those monsters was known to everyone who ever heard his name. Otis Adkins was terrified of vampires. Any shifters really, but it was the vamps and their long sharp teeth that had his bladder tightening up. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Just why not kill us all while he was there? But he had to get this woman to some doc somewhere. Right? He might have even given her a little of himself to keep her alive until the phone appears. After that comes to light, then he can do what he wants to her. But I’m thinking…well, if he saved her, then maybe she’s something to him.”

“What would he want with an undercover cop?” Joe said he had no idea, but how else would she have simply disappeared while they were standing over her. “I don’t know. And to be honest, I fucking don’t care what he wanted with her. But I can’t have her out there. Not alive, anyway. And the fact that we were too slow to realize about the camera does not set well with me, as you can well imagine. We were told that when undercover cells were left at the station. What the fuck is the one that we got from her desk there, a burner?”

“I would imagine. I’ve been having one of your computer guys looking into the lost phone a little more. They said that she was on the line with someone, her grandfather as it turns out, when we started on her, but it doesn’t appear that anyone has used it since. And no matter what he does, he can’t find it. Pinging it or something like that. Either it’s been destroyed, which we can only hope for, or someone with more smarts than we got here has it deep in some hole.”

He doubted that anyone was smarter than the men he employed. And if they were, he’d find them and bring them in to work for him, or kill them. Either way, he had the best of the best. If they had no idea where the phone was, he was going to assume that it was destroyed. It might let him sleep at night knowing that one thing was going his way.

After Joe left him to find out what he could about the grandfather, Otis went into the living room and sat on his couch to think. Almost as soon as he was seated a drink was brought to him and the fireplace was turned on. Christ, he loved having all the comforts of money. But it would soon be gone if he didn’t find that girl. Even now he was having some income issues that he could not figure out.

It had been five days since he’d been informed that Nikki was going to be out of reach to anyone that would help her, and two since the shoot-out. One way or the other Neal had been a pain in his ass for nearly two decades. And just when he had her where he’d been wanting her, she disappeared without a trace. And so had the only other person that would know where she was.

Paddy Neal had been about the best cop he’d had the displeasure of hiding from. Fat lot of good it had done him. Just a year after Paddy had joined the force, he’d made a name for himself by rooting out all the bad cops in the big house. Ten of Otis’s best men, all working for him, had been sent to prison. Sent, but never to be heard from again, thankfully.

It had taken him nearly five years to find himself another crew and have enough on them that they knew better than to turn him in, and now another fucking Neal comes in and does the same shit. Lucky for Otis the captain knew how to play ball, or he wouldn’t have even known about the bitch.

It had cost Otis a great many favors being called in to have each and every one of the first group of cops killed. Less for the second, but he hated to spend money needlessly. He kept waiting for someone to connect the dots, ones that would tell someone that he’d been paying people to kill the rogue cops, but had found out just recently that the state didn’t really care how they died so long as they were gone from their books. He’d done them a favor, he supposed, one that he’d never be able to collect on.

Then the fucking granddaughter had come along, and not only had she gotten him caught with his pants down, so to speak, but with the smoking gun with this latest shit. And if he didn’t find her before someone else did, or figured out about the phone, he was going back to prison, and it was doubtful that he’d ever come out unless it was in a long black bag with a one-way zipper.

His informant—her boss—had told Otis that she was close to having all her ducks in a row to bring him in. So close that she had two of his tweeters, men that only answered to him, asking to be taken out of the station so that they wouldn’t be caught. These were men, when he needed them to be, hitmen and drug dealers as well. Both tweeters were now dead, of course. Otis never left behind evidence, and he hated men who jumped ship before he said they could. And now he had to deal with the fact that the bitch had taken his picture. And all because she’d taken James Street and not Upland like he’d thought she would.

They’d been headed there when his driver had spotted her coming out of the little shop with a loaf of bread under her arm, of all things. He wondered now what might have happened if they had waited on her. Gotten her on her own street, right in front of her house. It was a moot point now, but it was something that stuck in his craw.

Then the bitch had pissed him off more because she’d not sounded like she was afraid. Of him or dying. When she’d offered to take him in if he turned himself over to her, he’d felt his temper, never the best anyway, snap. He had shot her first. And that was going to be his biggest downfall if he didn’t find the bitch. He was pretty sure that hitting her in the leg had left behind something that would come back to bite him in the ass.

Otis was one of the big-time drug dealers in the city. He wasn’t as untouchable as a couple of others in the area, but he was quickly making a name for himself by taking over the smaller territories that they didn’t bother with and expanding his working area. And when he’d told the bigger dealers and suppliers that he was going to have Nikki where he wanted her, they’d joined him on the street that morning. Christ, that had been his first of many mistakes concerning the cop.

When he’d been told her regular route—go to the store, buy dinner, then home—he’d been ready to take her as soon as she was on her own quiet street that had been devoid of everyone that had been home. She was as regular as his daily shit. When she finished with a case, she would do the same fucking thing. It would have been perfect but for the fact that she’d gone the wrong fucking way. Lucky, or maybe unluckily for him, they were headed there when she turned up in front of them.

They were ill prepared for her, and had gone off the cuff and shot her with witnesses galore to see them do it. Not that it stopped them from doing what they’d gone there to do, kill the fucking bitch. There had been enough big names with him to have people turning their backs on what was going down, he knew that. No one, as far as he knew, had ever come forward with any information on who the men were, who had been holding the guns, or where the hell the woman was that had supposedly bled all over the street. He supposed it paid to have enough gun power that when you told people not to say a word or else, they knew you meant it. And now she was gone.

He supposed if a vampire had come to get her, and snatched her away, then that would explain a great deal. No one, no matter how many times he’d wished it, just simply disappeared without a single trace. Not even when you buried them in concrete in new construction sites. Nor when you dropped them over the side of your boat when you were out for the day with the family. Everything found a way to pop up at the worse possible times.

Speed; it would have taken a great deal of it to get her and get out without anyone seeing anything. The fact that the vamp, if there was one, had gotten her during the daylight hours and wasn’t ash said he was old. And age meant magic. Otis was dealing with a vampire that not only was involved, but a very powerful one as well. Fuck, this was all he needed. Another person after his ass.

His wife, Savannah, and daughter, Dorothea, came into the living room when he was just ready to go to his office. He felt like a deer in the headlights when they saw him. Usually he never ventured far from his office; it was where he hid out when they were in the house. Otis loved them with all his heart, but with the impending wedding, he wanted to strangle them on a daily basis.

“We’re having a problem. And I need for you to fix it.” He told his wife that he’d try. “No, Otis, I need it fixed, not for you to try. This is our baby girl’s big day, and it’s going to be ruined if you don’t fix it. And I think you’re the only one that can.”

He looked at his daughter, Dorothea, the pride and joy of his life. And to be honest, he could not wait for someone else to take over her maintenance for a change. He was glad that Robert Trevino had a nice pot of money at his disposal, because she was expensive. And with the troubles that he’d been having of late with the police that were not on his payroll, it was becoming imperative that he do something to cut some of his outgoing money. His wife and daughter could go through a million dollars without blinking an eye, and it had to stop. He had no idea what to do about it either, short of taking away their credit cards, and that wasn’t going to happen unless it was a last straw.

“What is the problem, pumpkin? Daddy will do his best to make it right.” She sobbed, just as he expected her to whenever things weren’t going her way. Otis looked as his wife and saw something that startled him. Hatred. But it was there and gone so quickly that he was sure he’d been mistaken. “What’s happened?”

“Well, the cake that we ordered over six months ago might not be ready when we need it.” If memory served him right, the wedding was still about three or four months away. Valentine’s Day if he was correct. “They said that the flowers she wanted for the bottom tier might not be in bloom then, and they want to substitute another one for it. The same color he said, but not the right flower. That’s not the way we do things; substitution is not an option when it comes to our little girl’s wedding day, Otis. You need to make sure that it’s right. Pay him, or give me cash and I’ll pay him to get it right.”

Otis looked at his wife then at his daughter, who was now sobbing in earnest. A flower was causing this much commotion? Did they not realize that his life was on the line and there might not be a fucking wedding? But instead of telling them this, he let out a long breath and thought about what he was going to say.

“Daddy, you have to make it so the flowers that I want are there. I want you to make him get them.” He wasn’t even sure what he’d do, but said nothing. “This will be a disaster and will ruin everything for me. We’ll have to start from the beginning if you can’t make this right for me. I’ll need a new dress. The bridesmaids will have to have new dresses to match mine. The invitations won’t go with everything else. Those flowers were important to me.”

He had already shelled out over fifty grand on the dresses alone. There wasn’t any way he was going to have them start over. It was not that he couldn’t afford this…at least right now he could. But if the raids on his shipments and his drugs going into storage at the station house and not out on the street for him to cash in on continued, he was going to be fucked.

Christ, he shuddered when he thought of the countless taste testings that he’d had to go to. There would be no getting out of it this time either. Who the fuck really cared if the cake was chocolate with raspberries or strawberries? Just say the
I do’s
and be done with the whole damned thing.

“Now, I’m not trying to cause any uproar here, but what do these flowers have that the ones he can use don’t? Don’t be mad at me, I’m only asking so I know what we’re working with here.” His wife pulled out her phone and showed him the two pictures she had of the flowers that were picked out and the ones the baker needed to use. He swapped them back and forth three times, trying his best to find something, anything, that looked different. Hell, even the backgrounds behind them looked exactly alike. He looked at his little girl. “Honey, I don’t see any difference.”