He was on the hunt now. It didn’t matter that he was in his human form; some things were universal to both man and grizzly. In this they were the same: a singular focus when in search of prey. And since the man had vetoed chasing her, the bear allowed him to search for the unknown wrong that was threatening her.
Mark bent down, pushing his nose into the seat of the chair. He smelled Professor Simon as clear as day, but there was another scent. A man who liked onions and something else. Something very wrong. It was faint, but it was so unsettling that it turned his stomach.
He moved around the room trying to zero in on the rancid smell. It was strongest at the desk, and he returned there only to rock back on his heels in disgust. He needed another opinion. Someone who would take him seriously even if he was going crazy. He pulled out his phone and hit the third speed dial for his alpha. Maximus Carl Carman answered before the second ring.
“You okay? Where are you?”
Mark winced at the worry in his once best friend’s voice. “I’m at Professor Simon’s cabin. You know where it is?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m here with his daughter. I need…” How to phrase this exactly? I need you to come sniff a chair? I need you to tell me that this is not some weirder stage of going feral? I need you to take Julie away from me before I forget myself and pin her against a wall? In the end, he settled on the most general of statements. “I need your opinion.”
Silence. Then understanding. “You need my opinion there.”
Trust Carl to get it in one. “It’s a weird smell,” he said. “Almost like…” His voice trailed away. He hadn’t even thought of it until the words had started to form on his lips. “Before.”
“Does this have to do with the missing kids?”
A month ago, three shifter kids had gone missing—two wolves and one grizzly. Carl had saved two of them, but the psycho who’d been experimenting on them had disappeared along with a mysterious cat-shifter. The Gladwin grizzlies had been on alert ever since, but no new information had surfaced. At least not until now when Mark thought he might be smelling something similar. Hell, it was hard to tell. Meanwhile, his alpha was waiting for an answer.
“It’s not the same as what I smelled then,” he said, trying to compare this to the thousands of scents that had been in the bastard’s lab.
“But you suspect something.”
Maybe? He took another whiff. “It may be nothing.”
Carl didn’t need anything more. “I’m on my way. But as long as I have you on the line?—”
Mark thumbed off the phone. The last thing he needed was a bunch of useless how-are-you-doing questions. And anyway, Julie was clearly getting impatient where she stood in the open doorway.
“Mind telling me what’s going on?”
“Someone’s been here. Someone who isn’t your father.”
“Could be a lot of someones,” she said. “He interviews people here. Plus, I think he’s seeing a woman.” She didn’t sound upset by that. Her parents had been divorced for over a decade, so she’d had plenty of time to adjust to the change.
He nodded and pointed to the living room. “Dot doesn’t come in here,” he said. “She was in the living room and kitchen.” And bedroom, but no use telling her that little tidbit. “This is different. Whoever it was did something with your dad’s computer.” Probably sat here while he either copied her father’s research or downloaded something onto the computer. He wouldn’t know until he could get his own equipment here to check it out.
Julie wasn’t buying any of it. “Look, this is all very dramatic and everything except for one thing. Nobody cares about my father’s research. He tracks folktales. His own department barely cares.”
“I care,” Mark answered honestly. The man was looking into the anthropological background of shifter legends. Since Professor Simon was fully human, he called them fairy tales, but Mark knew there was a lot of truth to those old stories. From the moment the man had started asking about shape-shifter tales eight years ago, Mark had kept an eye on her father’s work, hoping to find an answer to his own particular problem. But he’d only gotten personally acquainted with the man three years ago when the professor had started focusing on the bonding rituals between shifters and their mates. Fascinating stuff for a guy who was desperately trying to keep his sanity, hoping for an answer in the old tales. But he had to admit that Julie had a point. He was hard pressed to see how anyone else might be interested.
Julie shook her head. “It obviously gets really boring up here. I’m going to go pack my father’s bag. You want to go sniff any more chairs? Have at it.” Then she pointed a pert, pink fingernail at him. “And find his journals!”
Mark barely resisted the urge to give her a mocking salute. Meanwhile, the first smattering of rain began. A few isolated plops on the windowpane, but it was all the warning they were likely to get. A deluge was coming soon.
“Oh, shit,” he cursed.
“What?”
“The rain. It’ll wipe any evidence outside.”
“What evidence? There’s been no crime!”
There was no convincing her, especially since he had plenty of his own doubts. But any hope of finding an answer outside was about to be washed away. So he headed for the door, resisting the urge to slip into his grizzly form. Last thing he needed was for her to get spooked and shoot him.
“Stay inside,” he ordered. “And stay out of the den.”
