Black Market Bear (A BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Genesis Valley Book 2) (3 page)

He frowned. “What’s that?”

Arianna leaned out and grabbed hold of her door once more. “A meeting place. I have to go to work now.”

She pulled the door closed and sped off. She tried her hardest not to glance in the rearview mirror, but her willpower failed after three seconds or so, and she split her attention between navigating the road in front of her and admiring the form in the mirror behind her.

“What are you doing Ari?” she asked herself aloud. “You work alone. Why are you bringing him into this?”

She bounced a hand off the steering wheel, frustrated. This whole thing was…weird.

Still, she smiled. It had given her another chance to spend time with Mr. Muscles. It couldn’t be
all
bad.

Ajax

“Charming,” he said as another car crawled by, bass pounding from the window as clouds of smoke from something most definitely not a cigarette poured from the windows.

What was it with Benjamin and the people he knew choosing such neighborhoods? According to Valen, he hadn’t been up to anything nefarious. Couldn’t they have picked at least a slightly more upscale part of town? He hadn’t expected a five-star hotel either, but he was pretty sure the sound he had heard a few minutes ago had been gunshots.

It wasn’t his safety he was worried about. As a shifter, gunshots were more of a nuisance than anything, unless they were big enough to pierce the strong bone of his skull. Even then a shifter could repair a lot of damage. They were just naturally tough beings to kill. But the woman—whose name he
still
didn’t know—was human, and much more susceptible to any sort of harm. Ajax felt a protective urge settle over him.

He looked up at the street signs. They read
Ninth Avenue
running east to west, and
Rickard Street
crossed it heading north and south. The woman hadn’t specified which corner, so he examined them all. The northwest, diagonal from him, had a convenience store, with some very thick-looking bars on the windows. The figures slinking around out front of it did nothing to reassure him, though it likely ruled that out as their potential meeting spot.

On the same corner as him the building was boarded up, and to his left was what looked like a pawn shop, though it was closed for the evening already, cage drawn across the entryway. Which left straight ahead of him, where big windows were lit with the diffuse white glow of older neon lights. The sign in the window read
Mel’s Donuts and Coffee.

Shrugging his shoulders, Ajax crossed the street, eyes searching the sidewalk and the windows above for any signs of trouble. The woman hadn’t seemed like she was leading him into some sort of trap, but he wanted to make sure. Something weird was going on, but he had no idea what just yet.

Nothing presented itself to him, so as casually as possible he opened the door, entering the coffee shop. An older gentleman was meticulously wiping down the counter. Unlike the bar he had been at earlier, he was using a clean, white towel. Ajax nodded respectfully, his eyes roaming the place. The wallpaper was old and faded, the pattern having gone out of style in the eighties at least, but none of it was peeling. The table and chair he sat at were well worn, but otherwise in good repair. The corners were free of accumulated dirt, and the menu on the tabletop looked to be new.

All in all, the old man took care of the place. Ajax couldn’t help but notice that his skin was more brown compared to those who he had seen skulking around the neighborhood. Not that it mattered to him, but younger people were often less accepting of those different than them. He wondered just what it was about this man that allowed him to run a clean and obviously well-loved place in a neighborhood such as this one.

“Evening sir,” the proprietor said at last. “What can I get you?”

He frowned, wondering how long he might be waiting. “Just a water for the moment please,” he said politely. “I’m meeting someone here, but I’m not sure how long we’re going to be.” He opened the menu to peruse it while he waited, in case they did order food.

The gentleman nodded and returned moments later with a tall glass of ice water.

“Thanks,” Ajax said with a nod.

He studied the menu for a few minutes more, until the diner door opened once again.

“Evening Mel!”

“Evening, Miss Jones,” the man said with more joviality than he had greeted Ajax with. He disappeared behind the counter as she all but marched up to his seat.

“So you found it,” she said, cautiously taking the seat across from him as he gestured to it.

“Wasn’t that hard. You kind of told me where to go,” he joked.

Miss Jones smiled, a genuine look that made Ajax’s heart thump an extra time or two as it sought to reestablish its normal rhythm. Licking suddenly dry lips, he allowed himself to be distracted as Mel reemerged from behind the counter with a mug and plate on a tray. He set it down in front of the woman with a flourish.

“You know me too well Mel,” she said in what was clearly a well-used line.

“It’s always good to see you,” Mel replied, before bustling back into the kitchen in an obvious attempt to give them privacy.

“Nice guy,” Ajax said with a nod to the kitchen door.

“Mel’s great,” she agreed between mouthfuls of the donut on her plate. It disappeared quickly and she took a swig of her coffee. “Okay, I feel alive now.”

He arched an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

“So, Ajax,” she said after a minute. “Why do you want to know about Benjamin?”

“I told you why. A mutual friend is concerned about his lack of response, and was unable to come check it out himself. I was going on vacation here anyway, so he asked me to go to a couple of places and look into his disappearance.”

“Mmm,” she replied. “And you’re a…bear shifter?”

He smiled. “And your name is?” he said in response, ignoring her question.

“Bear, wolf, whatever. No matter,” she said, pushing her glasses back up her nose as she all but examined him.

Ajax laughed. “Oh come on now, Miss Jones. Please, don’t make me call you that constantly. A first name isn’t going to divulge any more about you.”

She hesitated, thinking something over internally, before she finally answered. “Arianna.”

“Arianna,” he repeated slowly, letting it roll off his tongue.

“Don’t say it like that,” she said firmly.

He frowned. “Like what?”

“Like that. You know, slowly and softly like.”

Ajax looked around the shop, trying to understand what she meant. “Okay,” he said at last, admitting defeat. He hadn’t meant anything by repeating her name, but if it made her uncomfortable, he could humor her. “So, you’re done work now?” he asked instead of any of the number of other things he wished to ask.

She nodded, taking another sip of her coffee. “Yeah.”

“But you weren’t at work when we met earlier?”

“No,” she said, finishing her donut.

He sighed. “So what, exactly, were you doing there then?” he prompted when Arianna declined to go into detail.

“Following up a lead.”

Ajax waited for her to say more, but nothing came. He worked his jaw, trying to keep his temper down and remain calm.

“Why are you so reluctant to give me any details unless I all but pry them from you?” he asked, changing tactics.

Arianna looked at him for a moment, then her eyes focused out the window, canvassing the neighborhood. He thought about asking again, wondering if she had just ignored him. But before he could, her attention swiveled back to focus on him again.

“When you grow up around here,” she said with a wave of her hand out the window, “you quickly learn not to trust anyone, and that information can be a priceless thing.” Her ponytail swished with the movement, drawing his attention away as she readjusted her glasses.

“Does that ever get annoying?” he asked, motioning to her glasses. They had to be a size too big, which was why they kept falling down.

“A little,” she admitted sheepishly. “But I can’t afford a smaller size.”

“Ah.” He wasn’t sure what else to say, so he went back to the original topic. “So work, not work?” he prodded.

Arianna exhaled loudly. “Right. I was on my lunch break.”

“What exactly is it that you do?” he was still confused over the whole thing. Was she a friend of Benjamin, or...?

“I work for a website devoted to exposing the things the government doesn’t want you to know actually happened, or that they want you to think someone else caused, when it was actually them.”

“I see,” he said slowly. “So you’re a conspiracy theorist?”

She shrugged.

“What is the theory about Benjamin?” he asked, his eyes watching as she tightened her ponytail.

“Mine, or my boss’s?” she grumped.

“Yours,” he said gently. “You’re the one that seemed to care.”

“My boss doesn’t think it’s anything,” she explained. “That’s why I wasn’t supposed to be there, and why I had to take off on you in a rush. What
I
think happened is that he was abducted, taken, whatever you want to call it.”

“By whom?” Ajax wanted to be surprised, but the way Valen had approached him about this, he wasn’t.

“An organization. I don’t know if they’re government or independent—that one’s still up in the air. But in my line of work, I hear a
lot
of wacky stuff,” she said with an exasperation that told him she didn’t want to go into it. “Lately I’ve been hearing several rumors of a new group targeting a specific segment.”

“What segment is that?” he asked lazily, beginning to feel like he had gotten himself into some sort of nuthouse.

“Shifters,” she said, utterly serious.

That
got his attention. Whether he wanted to believe or not, if someone was after shifters and could just make them disappear, that was news. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time the shifter community had heard of such a thing either. But nobody had any sort of proof. It was all just whispers.

“Do you have any proof of this?” he asked sharply, leaning in intently.

Arianna gave him a dry look. “If anything that I found or wrote about had proof, do you think I’d be living here or driving the piece of shit you helped fix earlier?”

Before he realized it, Ajax found himself laughing. She had spirit, this one. He liked that. Not willing to back down to anyone, not him, not her boss. If she thought she was on to something, she would go after it. He admired that. “Fair enough,” he acquiesced, getting himself under control. “But you must have something. How did you come to that conclusion?”

She shrugged. “There was a post on a conspiracy theorist forum that said this agency was moving into King City, setting up shop. Shifters started going missing.”

Ajax narrowed his eyes. “Plural?”

“Yes. So far I have four confirmed missing shifters in the span of two months.”

He sat back. “In a city this size? That doesn’t mean a thing.”

“I know,” she agreed. “But each of them just disappeared into thin air. No one knows where they went. No bodies have been recovered. Nothing. Usually there’s one of the two.”

“That seems a little farfetched, don’t you think?”

“I deal in farfetched,” she told him. “That’s how I make my living, meager as it may be.”

“Right.” Ajax sat back. What was he doing? This isn’t what he had signed up for. He was supposed to be relaxing, seeing the city, and generally living without worry for a few weeks. Yet here he was instead, getting himself neck-deep in some sort of conspiracy mystery about missing shifters and shadow organizations.

Which made the next words that came out of his mouth even more incredible. “So, what’s next? What else do you know? Any other leads?”

Arianna dipped her head in what looked like defeat. “No. The pub was my last lead.”

He frowned. He didn’t like seeing her like that. His hand dug into his pocket. “What about this?” he asked, unfolding the piece of paper and pushing it across to her. “Have you been to these places?”

She speared the paper with her index finger, then used her middle finger to spin the paper in place until it was oriented for her to read.

“Hmm.”

“Hmm what?” he asked more eagerly than planned. “Hmm good? Hmm bad?”

Whoa. Simmer down and relax.
Ajax shook his head, trying to bring himself under control. This was not like him. He was usually much more in charge of his brain than this. Did he truly
want
to know what she was thinking? If he found out, it would mean he was drawing himself more and more into the middle of things.

He realized Arianna was looking at him as his attention focused back on the piece of paper between them.

“Hmm neither,” she said at last, giving him a weird glance. “More like, hmm weird.”

Instead of speaking, he gestured for her to continue.

“We both went to the pub. I’ve been here and here,” she said, pointing at two other names on the list. “They’re all dumps, like the pub. But this,” she said, tapping third line down. “This is interesting.”

The line simply read
Route Fifty.

“Yeah, I was meaning to find out what the heck that was. I looked it up, and there is no Route Fifty anywhere near King City.”

Arianna smiled. “It’s not a road, silly. It’s a club. And that’s what’s so weird.”

“What?” He was confused, and she was dragging it out now, enjoying taunting him with the information.

She flashed him a grin, exposing her teeth. “It’s not a dive club,” she said at last, having teased him enough. “It’s the complete opposite. Upscale, high end, very swanky type of place. Where did you get this list again?” she asked.

“From the mutual friend who asked me to look for Benjamin. He said to try these places. I guess they were the ones that Benjamin mentioned in his communications. I’m not really sure; I hadn’t expected to get so involved in this, so I didn’t ask.” He frowned, angry at himself for letting his own personal desires get in the way of doing what was right. “Apparently I should have,” he finished.