Bearly a Memory: Pacific Northwest Bears: (Shifter Romance) (3 page)

P
icking up his cell phone
, he made a call to the hospital. He waited on hold as they put him through to Human Resources.

“This is Tammy, how can I help you?” the prim voice answered.

“Hi Tammy, I’m Sheriff Tanner Rochon of the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department. We believe one of your employees has been in an accident. I’m looking for emergency contact information.”

“Sure, which employee?”

“Brooklyn Nishi,” he said.

“Brooklyn! We haven’t heard from her all week! She disappeared. We’ve all been so worried about her. After what happened, we were thinking the worst,” Tammy said.

“After what happened?” Tanner asked, his bear rearing up in worry.

“Well, the last anyone saw of her was the night we had a shooting outside our ER. A gang member was brought in with a gunshot wound in the leg. While he was being treated, two more members of the same gang were executed in the ambulance bay. Bang, right in the head! We didn’t think Brooklyn was involved, but we wondered if she just got freaked. Everyone will be so glad that she’s okay,” Tammy said.

“Tammy, what gang?” Tanner asked.

“Oh uh, it was one of those motorcycle clubs. Sick Devils, I think? The ambulance bay was a mess,” Tammy said with a gagging noise.

“And that was the night she disappeared?”

“Yeah, she was on shift and then poof!” Tammy said dramatically.

Tanner didn’t like where any of this was headed. An important hospital administrator did not just pack up and disappear from her job without telling anyone where they were going. Only people that were worried or scared did that.

“Tammy, I need you to do me a favor,” Tanner said, lowering his voice. He found he could get people’s attention when he dropped his tone.

“Oh, yeah sure, what do you need?” she asked breathily.

“I’m worried that Brooklyn might be in trouble. If you can give me her emergency contact info then keep the fact she is in my town secret, I would be forever grateful.”

There was silence for a moment, and then he heard her sigh, “Of course, Sheriff Rochon. I can do that. Anything you need, I’m happy to help.”

Tanner shook his head. Sometimes he didn’t understand people. “That would be great, Tammy. I just want to keep Brooklyn safe. I’ll let her know you were worried about her. But keep the fact that she has been found to yourself. Can you do that?”

“I’m your girl, Sheriff,” Tammy said, sounding excited she was in on the caper.

“Excellent. I’ll take the contact information. And Tammy…I’ll keep you in the loop, yeah?” Tanner knew this HR rep was thinking she was in on the secret squirrel action. He’d let her keep thinking that until he figured out the extent of the mystery.

Tammy was happy to give him Brooklyn’s contact information. It was for her parents who also lived in San Francisco.

Thanking her, he hung up and grabbed the purse. Knowing there may be a bigger reason for this woman to be hiding out in their town made Tanner anxious. He needed to get to the hospital and see if she was awake.

He thanked Betty and watched as she locked the room back up. Tanner wanted Brooklyn to know her room hadn’t been violated. He figured she’d already had a worse day than him; she didn’t need to feel like someone rifled through her panties.

Shit, he needed to not think about the panties.

He headed to his black SUV that had blacked out windows and black rims. It said
Apex Sheriff
on the side, but the overall appearance of the vehicle made it blend in. Gave him the opportunity to stay out of sight when he needed to. He jumped in and hit his Bluetooth to call her parents while he drove.

The phone only rang once, and a woman with a frantic voice picked up. “Brooklyn, is that you baby?”

Clearing his throat, Tanner introduced himself. “No, ma’am. I’m Sheriff Rochon. I got your contact information from Brooklyn’s work.”

“Oh, no lord, tell me she’s not dead,” the woman cried.

“No, ma’am. She is not dead,” he said, then realized he didn’t know because he hadn’t checked in on her.

“Your daughter was hiking in the woods and fell. She’s at our local hospital. I’m on my way there now to check in on her,” Tanner explained.

“What hospital? I’ll drag my husband away from his model trains, and we’ll be there,” the woman said.

“Mrs. Nishi, did you know where your daughter was?” Tanner needed to know if Brooklyn had taken a vacation or was on the run.

“No, the girl just up and vanished. The police here wouldn’t do anything until she’d been gone for seventy-two hours. They finally let us file a missing person’s report yesterday. Not that it is going to do any good. They say adults can leave without telling their parents where they are going. Shit, I know that, doesn’t mean that I don’t know when something is wrong. My baby would never go days without calling me. Those bastards are sitting on their asses eating donuts and not looking for my baby girl!” The woman said this with a screech.

“Ma’am, your daughter didn’t mention anything about the shooting at her work, did she?” Tanner kept up with the questioning as he drove.

“No, she didn’t, and my girl tells me everything. I heard about it on the news. I told them they probably kidnapped her, but they said the security cameras didn’t show Brooklyn there,” she explained.

That was puzzling. How did she link to the shootings? Or did she at all? Maybe having something so violent happen just scared her enough into running.

“Mrs. Nishi, do you think your daughter just wanted a break? Or had a vacation planned that she hadn’t mentioned?”

“Honey, you can call me Maybelle, I’m nobody's ma’am,” the woman said slyly. “My daughter doesn’t take vacations, Sheriff. Hell, I made her take up knitting because she’d get so stressed out at work. My daughter loves her job. She wouldn’t abandon it. Do you think she is in some kind of trouble?”

Tanner wasn’t about to lie to her. “I honestly don’t know, Maybelle. Everyone seems surprised by her disappearance and her decision to drive two states away without telling her family. Well, that seems suspicious to me. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Brooklyn yet. Do you think you can keep this quiet? Let me do some investigating before you visit? If she’s running from someone, we don’t want to tip them off to her location. We may all be overreacting, and this was just a case of her needing a break. But I’d feel a lot more comfortable knowing that was the situation and not that she needs help.”

“Well now, aren’t you a friendly public servant? You wouldn’t happen to be married now, would ya, Sheriff Rochon?” Maybelle asked.

Clearing his throat, “No ma’am, not married.”

“Well, you cute? You sound cute,” she continued.

“Uh…” Shit, Tanner was out of his element on this.

“Oh, I’m just teasing you, sugar. You go find out if my girl is okay. You call me the minute you know. She’s healthy, you tell her to haul her ass back here before I blister it. She’s sick, you call me and let me know. Brooklyn’s in trouble, we’ll stay put, but I want regular updates. I can Google with the best of them. I can figure out where she is and where you are if I have to,” she warned.

“I’ll keep in touch, Maybelle. I promise,” he said. He really didn’t want her to track him down.

“You do that. And while you’re checking on my baby, you just text me over a picture of you. You know, just in case I need to, you know…identify you,” she said.

Tanner wasn’t sure if she meant that in a good way or a not so good way.

“I’ll be in touch,” Tanner said and pushed the button to hang up before the conversation got any more uncomfortable.

Tanner ran over in his mind what he knew so far. It wasn’t much, but his bear was telling him that he needed to be on point for this. Crazy parents and a pretty woman couldn’t distract him. Much.

P
ulling
into the hospital parking lot, Tanner parked up front in one of the spaces marked for police vehicles.

As he got out, he waved at a few people leaving. Swinging by the reception desk, he smiled and greeted the receptionist, another Rochon cousin, and then headed directly to the ER.

A few nurses nodded as they saw him enter. He was looking for Eddie. Another Rochon, who was the first doctor in the family. Even when he was offered positions all over the country, he came home to work. He said that Apex needed him as much as any big city.

“Eddie, how’s the patient?” he asked when he spotted him in the hallway.

“I’m assuming you mean the only one currently here that doesn’t have a name?” Eddie flashed a smile that had most women's panties dropping at the sight. Eddie was tall like all the Rochon men, but he’d lucked out with some recessive gene that gave him golden blond hair. He was all lean muscle and had aristocratic features that got him his fair share of teasing from his more burly bearded kin.

“She’s not awake?” Tanner asked, concerned. He had hoped she’d be awake by now and giving all her information to the hospital staff. Her still being out also meant that he couldn’t question her.

“No, I’m not too concerned. I think her body is just protecting itself. We did a CAT scan, and although there is a hematoma under her skull, it’s not getting any bigger. We’ll keep an eye on it and can hopefully avoid having to drill a hole in her head.” Eddie said this with almost a gleeful look in his eye.

He wasn’t wishing the worst for the woman. Tanner knew that Eddie usually spent his time dealing with cuts, breaks, and often crushing injuries that came from the logging accidents. Being smashed by a tree was not something most people lived through. Outside of normal illnesses and the occasional car accident or hiking injury, Eddie rarely got to practice his excellent surgical skills. For a small town, they were state of the art when it came to medical equipment and funding. Granted it was the Rochon name that was stamped on every surface of the hospital.

“A hole in her head?” Tanner couldn’t help but frown at his cousin.

“To relieve the pressure,” Eddie explained. “I think now that we have slowly raised her body temperature, she should wake up any time. She’s pretty, huh?”

“Keep your eyes to yourself,” Tanner said with a growl. He wasn’t sure why he said that, but he felt compelled to.

“What, just cause you found her, you get to keep her? I don’t think that’s how it works, cuz.” Eddie laughed.

“No, I’m just trying to figure her out. Her name is Brooklyn Nishi. She lives in California. I’ve talked to her work and her parents. Nobody knew she was out here, and they had a suspicious incident at her work. I’m not totally sure she isn’t in some kind of trouble.”

“Uh-huh, sure. I’ll believe that. Couldn’t be that Ms. Nishi is curvy, drop dead gorgeous, and smells tasty, could it?” Eddie said, giving his cousin raised eyebrows that he wiggled.

“Stop sniffing her,” Tanner rumbled.

“Oh, yeah. I see how it is. Fine, you called dibs. I can respect that.”

“I’m going to go check on her. You have a problem with that?” Tanner was feeling defensive all of a sudden. He didn’t like it. He was the calm, cool one; the master at defusing tense situations. Now he was agitated, his skin crawling knowing she was in the other room. He wanted to see her breathing for some reason.

“She’s been moved to room 103. Good luck,” Eddie said with a wink.

Damn him. He would probably tell his mom who would then call Tanner’s mom. Nothing momma bears liked more than matchmaking for their kids. He had work to do, not momma gossip to manage.

Walking down the long hallway to room 103, Tanner paused to listen. No sound was coming from the room. He knocked lightly, and there was no reply. Pushing open the door, he walked straight into a privacy curtain someone had pulled closed. Tanner quietly pulled it open and stepped into the area with the bed. He closed the curtain behind him to give her privacy. She wouldn’t know if people were staring at her, but he knew for sure that he didn’t want anyone watching her without permission.

She was lying on the bed, her color much better than the worrisome gray color that she’d been when they found her. There was a large inflatable blanket over her that was hooked to a machine pumping warm air through it. She still had an IV in her arm, and there was oxygen in her nose. Other than those tubes, she just looked like she was sleeping.

Someone had dried her hair, and it flared out on the pillow like a curly cloud. Tanner wanted to touch it but curled his hand into a fist to keep his desires in check.

Standing at the foot of the bed, he wrapped his hands around the handles at the end and stared. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He just knew that he and his bear were both pretty damn content just watching her breathe in and out.

Every breath was reassuring to him. It calmed his animal. Gave him a sense that everything was going to be okay, just because she was still there.

Tanner didn’t know what his next steps were. Without her input on her own disappearance, he had nowhere else to research without raising suspicions. But did he just stay there and wait for her to wake up? That would be seen as a little too involved for a sheriff. His bear wanted to pull up a chair and hold onto her hand until he finally saw she was going to be okay. Again, not something a sheriff should do.

Taking one last look at her, he turned and walked back into the hallway, making sure to secure the curtain for her privacy.

He gave Eddie a chin lift and walked back outside to call Brooklyn’s mom.

“Maybelle, she’s still unconscious,” Tanner said when her mom picked up on the first ring. “They have her body temperature back up, and she’s resting comfortably. They say she does have a bruise on her brain where she hit her head. But they are sure she just needs some rest to wake up. I’d like it if you could entrust her to me until I can make sure she was just on a vacation up here, not running from a potential contract on her life. These men are not amateurs, Mrs. Nishi. The kinds of people that would even put a price on a person’s head don’t do it for show. If they intend to kill your daughter, I won’t let that happen,” Tanner finished.

“All of my momma instincts are telling me I need to be by my baby’s side. But I’m going to trust my baby girl to you, Sheriff Rochon. You keep her safe and make sure she wakes up. I don’t care how you do it; that’s not my problem. But I’m telling you, I want my girl on the phone telling me she’s okay by tomorrow, you hear me?” Maybelle said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

“Yes, ma’am. I’ll do my best,” Tanner promised. They weren’t just words, either. He meant it.

“All right, I’ll go tell her daddy. Man is in a tizzy, and by that I mean he’s been doing crosswords since you called last. Never good when he does crosswords,” Maybelle mumbled.

“I’ll call,” Tanner promised.

Pulling off his hat, he ran his hand through his messy hair again. He needed food and time to figure out what the hell his next step would be.

Aunt Jennie’s diner sounded like just the place to refuel and ponder Brooklyn Nishi.