CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Rather than waiting for their food at a table as they did last time they visited the restaurant, Soren leaned into the kitchen doorway watching a sweaty, overworked Pamela operate the fryer and grill simultaneously.

“Y’all again?” She laughed. “Give me a minute to clear these orders out, and I’ll be out there with you. Y’all eating?”

“Yes.”

“Go on and sit down, then. I see you. I’ll be out there in a jiff.”

“Come on.” Marcella pulled Soren away from the door by the arm and steered him toward a table near the exit. Again, he took a seat with a good view of the dining room and with easy access to the door.

No sooner did they sit—Marcella really fell into her seat more than properly sitting—did one of her phones ring.

Sighing, she patted her pants pockets and held up the one that had been vibrating. “Who the hell is that?” Her nose crinkled and the line between her brows creased.

“One of the Shrews?”

“I don’t think so.” She tucked the phone away, obviously not interested in receiving calls from unknown numbers. “I have all their work numbers. They all have the same area code and prefixes. I think most of their personal cells have 919 area codes, too.”

“And that number didn’t?”

“No.”

He grunted and pushed his chair back to stand. He needed to get some sugar into her, whether Marcella was amenable or not. Shapeshifters always needed to eat and refuel after changing forms, and he didn’t imagine she was much different. Pulling one’s self back into a human shape required an excessive amount of energy, and she likely hadn’t had enough to start with.

He returned to the table with two large Styrofoam cups filled with sweet tea and found her squinting at her buzzing phone. “Not a wrong number, I guess?”

“They’re trying again, but I don’t know who they are. No one knows this number except for the ladies at the office and a couple of family members. If this were them, they’d leave a message, knowing that I have to screen my calls sometimes.” She shrugged and slid the pad of her thumb across her screen. “Hello?” she said into the phone.

He stabbed a straw through the lid of her tea and pushed the cup to her.

The lines between her brows deepened.

“Yes, this is Marcella, and who are you?”

For a long while, she listened without responding. Normally, seated so close, Soren would have been able to catch at least a few words of what the person on the other end was saying, but there was muffling. That may have been a partial cause of Marcella’s expression of confusion.

“No,” she said, playing with the end of her straw. “That hasn’t come up.”

“Who is it?” he whispered.

She didn’t answer him. She brought her tea up to her mouth, took a long draw on the straw, and then grimaced as she swallowed. “I don’t know. That isn’t my bailiwick. Why call me?”

Giving a covert glance around the table, he slid his hand beneath, found her thigh, and squeezed it.

She put her hand over his but didn’t give him the answers he sought or even meet his gaze.

“Assuming that was in my best interest,” she said, “give me a good reason why I should.” She drummed her fingers against the back of his hand and straightened up when Pamela sidled over with a couple of plates piled high with delicious, greasy sustenance for them.

“I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment,” she said. “You’ll have to phone me back. Call and leave a message.” She ended the call and tucked her phone away, murmuring her apologies.

“Who called you?” he asked.

She shrugged and cleared her throat. “Someone I hadn’t heard from in a while. I didn’t think I’d ever speak to them again.”

“That’s the thing about cell phones,” Pamela said, shaking her head in commiseration. “Folks have a way of getting your attention whether you have it to give or not.”

“Amen.”

Pamela propped her elbows on the table and looked from Marcella to Soren. “So. How’s your visit turning out?”

Soren held up a hand to bid her to wait. He wanted at least one bite of pork in his mouth before getting back to business. Marcella was busy cutting her sandwich into wedges with a useless plastic knife, but she spoke first. “We’d like to ask a favor of you.”

“What kind of favor?”

“We went to the CarrHealth administrative office this morning and learned some things about your study manager.”

Pamela’s eyes nearly rolled out of her head. “What about him? I hope he experimented with toxic lice and fell dick first into a vat of ’em.”

Marcella snorted.

Soren had to admit Pamela created a hell of a mental image.

“I can’t make that promise, though if we ever get close to him, I’m certain the ladies at the office would love to arrange something for you.”

Pamela harrumphed and loosened the tie of her greasy apron at her waist. “Well, if they can, I’ll personally oversee the punishment. Hell, I’ll hold him by the ankles and dip him in myself.”

“I guess you don’t like being a Bear,” Soren said low.

“It ain’t what I had in mind for my middle years. Would have been one thing if I’d been young and had more time on my hands, but I can’t afford to be losing big swaths of time to this mess. I need to be out working. I don’t wanna be parked on a rental property my whole dang life. I’d at least like to have a little house somewhere on a lot I own by the time I get some grandkids I can spoil proper.”

Silence hung in the air. Pamela couldn’t have known what they did about Kim and her child’s adoption. That sort of personal family history wasn’t the kind of thing polite people would bring up to her.

Marcella gave her throat a silent clearing and said softly, “There’s still time for that.”

“Hope so. I made so many mistakes with Kimmy. Gotta make it up to someone.” She put on a tight grin. “So. What do y’all want me to do?”

Marcella had just picked up her sandwich, and Soren wanted it in her mouth and not back on her plate, so he took the conversational torch from her. “We need you or someone you know or trust to lure Wes here. He’s the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation, and also guilty of some acts that there aren’t actual crimes on the books for.”

“The paranormal stuff, huh?”

Soren grimaced. “There are still individuals in the group who have to get in touch with him for various reasons, yes?”

“Well, yeah. Normally, the Bears call, and he’ll meet them a location he picks out about an hour in advance.”

“Never the same place twice?”

“Naw, I don’t think so. Shady, ain’t he?”

“Shady’s too nice a word,” Marcella murmured through a mouth full of chicken.

“We came down here specifically to ensure that the…” Soren paused long enough for a pair of departing old-timers to pass the table, fiddling with his fork as they teetered past with their canes. After a long pause at the entrance, where they lingered to hug a waiting couple, they departed. Soren leaned toward Pamela and whispered, “We came here to ensure that the Bears here aren’t on the wrong side of our problem, and to make sure Wes sees justice.”

“Court system can’t do nothin’ with him, as far as we go.” She frowned. “Said it right there in that paperwork I gave you. Said we have to agree to arbitration or whatever if we have problems with the study.”

“Fortunately for you,” Marcella said, “you can consider that contract null and void because, to start, Wes isn’t an employee of CarrHealth, and he acted as though he was operating on their behalf. Secondly, even if he were acting in good faith on behalf of CarrHealth, he’s already voided the contract in numerous ways. There’s no longer any deal for you to hold up. You’re justified in seeking legal guidance.”

“He probably won’t make it to court,” Soren murmured. “He might end up like Gene, held in secret custody by law enforcement, but under our supervision.”

“Say what?” Pamela asked.

“We’ll explain later who we represent and why we’re here,” Marcella said. “For now, all you need to know is that there’s another group of women who underwent a similar deception and they’re the ones trying to prevent Wes and any cronies he still has from moving to another town and starting up the scheme again.”

“Oh! Well, tell me what to do. I’d like more than anything to see that little weasel get what’s coming to him.”

“So, how about this,” Soren said. “Tell us what’s the one thing Wes wants more than anything.”

Pamela tapped her jaw contemplatively for a minute and then emitted a satisfied grunt. “More than anything? Well, I think he wants something he can take to the Department of Defense. He never said so in that exact language. I don’t have much in the way of fancy skills like yours, but I think my hearing’s a little better than most of the Bears around here. He’d walked off one time to take a call, and I heard him talking to someone about getting closer to having a formula to sell. I didn’t think anything of it then, but now I’m putting two and two together.”

Soren gave Marcella a pointed look. “That falls in line with what the ladies rooted out a few weeks ago.”

She nodded. “In my estimation, the best plan is to lure Wes here is to inform him that you have something new to show him—some new Bear thing he hadn’t logged before.”

“But we would have to declare the time and place.”

Pamela tapped her jaw some more and made a clucking sound with her tongue. “He won’t go to the woods. Tried that before. Wanted him to see how much pain some of the ladies are in during the full moon, but he didn’t want to go out there to see them. Kept saying they’d be fine after a while, and all that mess was normal. I know it’s not, and I guess he knows, too. There’s this wildlife rehab center out in the sticks that he goes to sometimes. I followed him out there a couple of times when I needed to chase him down for my money he was late with. I didn’t let him see me, though. I ended up just wanting to know what he was up to and never got around to collecting my money.”

“Wildlife rehab?” Soren asked. “What kind of wildlife?”

“Big game. That’s all I know. Lord knows what he’s doing out there. Does that help at all?”

“That information helps plenty,” Marcella said. She licked sauce from her sandwich off her fingers and reached for a napkin. “We’ll set up a call between you and Wes and have my employer listen in on her end in case we need backup.”

“You don’t think things are gonna get rough, do you?”

“One can never guess,” Soren said. “Wes has managed to keep himself from facing any real consequences for his actions thus far. When he’s feeling caged, we won’t be able to predict what he’ll do.”

“Either way, we’ll take care of him once and for all,” Marcella said.

There was conviction in her voice that not even Soren would have opposed. She might have been new to the business, but she knew how to play the game.

“When do you want to do it?” Pamela asked. “The call, I mean. I’m off all day tomorrow.”

“In the morning,” Soren said, “and that’ll give us the whole day to plan something if he’s going to be in the area. How fast do you think he’ll come down if you say you have new information?”

“He’s been known to hop on a plane within a few hours. Of course, we don’t know where he’s coming from. He could be nearby right now, and we just haven’t seen him.”

“True.” Soren scooped up more of his barbecue, wondering if he should broach the subject of Kim being at the office, and decided to go for broke. He wanted to hear Pamela’s voice if she was taken aback. He wanted to see her face and gauge her scent. “Marcella saw Kim at the CarrHealth office earlier. I thought perhaps she was picking up a check for you or something.”

Cocking her head to one side, Pamela put a hand to her heart. “My Kim?”

“Unless she has an identical twin, that was her,” Marcella said.

Pam shook her head hard. “Well, she wouldn’t have gone down there for nothin’. I told her the last time she asked me about them to stay away from them folks.”

“What was Kim trying to find out about them?” Marcella asked.

“She was asking me about how fast they paid and stuff like that. I told her that no matter how fast they paid, it wasn’t fast enough and the money wasn’t good enough for what they’d do to her. She said she was asking for a friend, and I left the subject at that. I guess I was too tired to ask her what friend.” She dropped her hand and scrunched her nose. “You don’t think she’s… She’s not trying to sign up for nothing, is she? ’Cause that would be plum foolish. She knows all the Bears.”

Ah.

Soren raised his eyebrows at Marcella, who nodded. Kim wasn’t out of the loop.

“She knows what we went through. She was up with me all those nights I was crying with pain that no one should ever have to endure.” Pamela produced a phone from her pocket and woke up the screen. “I’m gonna call her and see what she was doing.”

“No.” Soren and Marcella reached for Pamela’s hand at the same time.

“Well, why not?”

“Trust a girl who has to tell her mother white lies all the time for the sake of maintaining everyone’s sanity,” Marcella said. “She’s not going to tell you the truth, especially not if you tell her who told you she was there. She didn’t look at me with trust. In fact, she was confrontational. She’s going to be slippery.”

“It’s like I don’t even know her no more,” Pamela whispered, and then pulled in a breath. “What should I do?”

“I’ll take care of everything.”

Soren grunted agreement. “We have a way of pulling phone records. We can find out who she’s been in touch with. She’d never know.”

“You’ll do that tonight before I do anything with Wes?” Pamela asked.

“Yes, and we’ll let you know what we find out,” Marcella said. “If we have to confront her, we’ll make sure she doesn’t get hurt.”

“Y’all promise? She’s all I got, you know.”

Marcella nodded acquiescently. “I promise, we’ll do everything in our power to keep your child safe.”

“Good.” Pamela let out a breath of relief and wrung her hands in her apron. “I haven’t been able to, so I sure hope y’all can.”