Alyssa shrugged. “I ended up helping, but I’m not sure if it was necessary. This guy was impressive. And maybe a little different. He put two of the Neanderthals down without breaking a sweat.”
Nathan’s blue eyes narrowed. “You think he’s special?”
She considered that, hesitant to say it out loud. But she finally nodded. “I think so. He’s a big man, but still, no human could be that strong. He growled, too. And I’m pretty sure I saw a flash of yellow coming from his eyes at one point.”
Alyssa considered mentioning he ate food like it was going out of style but decided against it. That admission would invariably lead to questions about her having dinner with him, and she didn’t want to get into that with her boss.
“Any idea exactly what we’re dealing with?”
“None,” she admitted. “But for what it’s worth, we talked, and while he’s definitely dangerous, he doesn’t strike me as a threat. In fact, I think he can help with this case. There’s definitely something strange going on here with these disappearances.”
Nathan regarded her for a few moments. “I trust your instincts, Alyssa, but I think you need to start from the top, maybe without skimping on the details this time.”
She sighed, then did as he asked, trying to make logical sense out of everything that had happened that night…minus most of the diner stuff. She couldn’t say why she didn’t want to tell her boss about that part, other than the fact that breaking bread with a possible supernatural creature wasn’t normal protocol. In some ways, it felt like she was lying to her dad, but her instincts told her to stick a sock in it, so she did.
Nathan frowned throughout a good portion of the conversation, but he did that most of the time anyway. He interrupted frequently with pointed questions, and more than once, he gave her a look suggesting he knew she was keeping stuff from him. But in the end, he promised he’d do complete background checks on Zane, Stefan, ex-police chief Randy Curtis, and Black Swan Enterprises. Though he said he’d have to tread carefully around Black Swan.
“They’re a big organization with a lot of lawyers and IT security types on the payroll,” her boss said. “We have to do this the right way or risk tipping them off we’re looking at them.”
Alyssa knew Nathan was right about that. A company like Black Swan was savvy enough to pay attention to every little ripple in the web that concerned them. But still, she chafed at the idea of going slowly on something like this.
“I understand. Do what you can. And while you’re busy digging, see what you can find out about the Dallas SWAT team, too,” she suggested. “Something tells me you’re going to find a whole bunch of weird around anything they’re involved in.”
Nathan nodded and added a few more lines of scribble to the notes he’d been taking. When he was done, he looked up with a worried expression on his face. “You going to be okay handling this one on your own for a while longer, or should I get some backup out there?”
Alyssa smiled. “Do you really have anyone free to send?”
Another frown. “Not really. But I’ll pull someone off another case if I have to.”
She’d known that was what Nathan was going to say before the words were even out of his mouth. There were never enough people to do the job. Hence, the unwritten rule ofyou’re on your own until you confirmed there was a reason to send in other members of the team.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I got this.”
Nathan hung up a few minutes later, leaving Alyssa sitting on her bed, tired, thinking about tomorrow’s meeting with Zane, and wondering if she really did have this.
Chapter 3
Zane stood outside Room 381 in the Westin with his eyes closed, no doubt in his mind he had the right room. The scent slipping from beneath the door in front of him was obviously Alyssa’s. There was no other woman in the world with pheromones that amazing. He let the incredible flowery, chocolatey, cinnamony aroma wash over him. He refused to consider why she smelled so damn nice when other women simply smelled…normal. But it would be a lie to say the thought of Alyssa beingThe Onefor him hadn’t intruded on his thoughts as he lay in bed at the motel last night. An appealing, impossible-to-ignore scent had been how all the other guys in the Pack had described the smell emanating from their soul mates.
But Alyssa wasn’t his soul mate. Zane was certain of that. For one thing, he had no damn time to be thinking about anything other than finding Curtis and putting an end to the bloody hunters trying to kill everyone he cared about. For another, it was a safe assumption a person had to have a soul to have a soul mate. His had been burned out long ago.
Even so, he had to admit the fight in the alley behind the club last night had been sort of fun. Yeah, he’d tussled with some guys back in Dallas when he’d helped his pack mate Jayden Brooks save the woman he loved, but that had been two idiot gangbangers who barely knew what they were doing. Those men behind the club had been trained killers. Cutting loose against them had felt good, even if he still couldn’t do much with his left arm. He’d tried to get a backhand swing with that arm at one point, and the pain had been so severe his vision had gone a little dark for a few seconds. But he’d fought through it and had taken down three armed men before they could fire a shot.
Well, he’d taken down two. Alyssa had handled the other one.
Zane snorted. He probably looked ridiculous standing there in the hallway with a big grin on his face, but watching Alyssa put that wanker on his ass had been kind of hot. That little verbal fencing he’d gotten into with her after the fight, when neither of them had wanted to give up anything to the other, had been a turn-on, too. He hadn’t realized it before, but clearly, he had a thing for strong, feisty women. Even if she represented nothing more than a way to keep an eye on those twin werewolves and find Curtis faster, he could still appreciate the attraction.
That was the line he kept telling himself whenever he started wondering why he’d agreed to have that late-night snack with her at the diner and why he hadn’t been able to keep his damn mouth shut after getting there. He’d ended up telling her a lot more about his SWAT team and the search for Curtis than he’d planned. But sitting across from her and breathing in her scent, all the filters that usually limited what he said to anyone outside the Pack stopped functioning.
At least he was smart enough to recognize how dangerous that made her. He hoped.
Zane was balancing the tray of cups on the box of donuts he was holding so he could knock on her door when his mobile phone buzzed. He thought about ignoring it in favor of seeing Alyssa, but he knew that would be stupid. There weren’t many people who had his number, and the ones who did were all important.
His mobile vibrated again as he moved down the hall and pulled it out. When he saw Becker’s name on the screen, he thumbed the green button eagerly. He’d called the team’s resident hacker after getting back to the hotel last night and asked him to do a little digging on Alyssa. He’d hoped the other alpha werewolf would have gotten back to him before this, but in the end, he was glad Becker was calling before Zane met with her this morning.
“What do you have?” he asked as he slipped into an alcove near the vending machines. “And what took so damn long?”
There was a growl from the other end of the line. “Bite me, you grouchy Brit. Maybe you haven’t noticed but doing background checks for you isn’t my day job. I was out until four this morning on a domestic violence hostage situation, then had to stop by the compound to help out a small beta pack who showed up in town. So excuse the fuck out of me if I didn’t get your crap to you as fast as you wanted.”
