Bear Naked Read online

  But Bunny shook his head. “Nah. Her OB/GYN said this was normal. It’ll pass once the baby’s born, if not sooner.” With Jamie Howard no longer practicing medicine, Tabby had been forced to go to a human gynecologist. Luckily, shifter pregnancies followed human ones. A baby would pop out, not a cub, so they were safe there. Still, just to be safe, Julian was monitoring her pregnancy almost as closely as Bunny was.

  “If you’re sure.” Julian tugged on his own coat.

  Ryan headed for the front door, donut and coffee in hand. “If you value your lives you’ll bring those donuts.”

  Laughing as the two Bears scrambled for the donuts, Ryan headed out to his car, eager to see his mate.

  “Rye?”

  “Hmm?”

  Bunny frowned. “If we stay in Halle…?”

  Ryan nodded. “I’ll work with you.”

  Bunny relaxed, his natural, easy-going smile gracing his face. “Good.”

  “You were seriously worried about that?” Ryan shook his head. “Chloe’s out here, Glory’s out here. You’re out here. Of course I’m staying. Asshole.”

  “Thanks. Buttmunch.”

  Julian walked past them snickering. “I do not want to know if you’re kissing cousins.”

  Rolling his eyes, Ryan slipped into his car. “Meet you at Cynful.”

  “Will do. And Ryan?” Bunny squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. “It’s going to be all right, no matter what we find.”

  “I know. Because I’ll be there for her, no matter what.”

  “Exactly.”

  When Ryan said he was going to do something, he sure as hell did it. Glory watched as Gabriel Anderson, the Halle sheriff and one of the local Pumas, stepped into Cynful Tattoos with a file folder in his hand and a determined air. The man filled out a uniform like no one else, his broad shoulders and piercing blue eyes giving her more than one wet dream before Ryan came to town.

  But the sheriff was utterly devoted to his wife, Sarah, a sweet woman who worked in the local high school, and Ryan…

  Well, Ryan had given her more than wet dreams.

  He was standing there, arms crossed, blue eyes sharp, his dark hair tousled like he hadn’t gotten the chance to brush it before leaving his apartment that morning. His breath had smelled suspiciously like orange breath mints when his lips had grazed hers.

  “Hey, Glory. I hear you want to talk to me.” The sheriff held out his hand, looking surprised when she hugged him. He’d helped save Cyn, and been instrumental in giving Tabby a home. As far as Glory was concerned, he was family.

  “Gabe.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek, enjoying the blush that highlighted his face. The man was adorable, and Sarah was a lucky woman. “Did Ryan fill you in?”

  “Ah. Yes.” He fumbled the papers he’d been holding in his hands. “You want me to reopen the case into your missing twin.” And that quickly, the blushing man turned into the no-nonsense sheriff. “It won’t be easy. It seems like the investigator seriously dropped the ball on this one.” He shook his head. “I have to contact the old sheriff and see what he knows about it.”

  “Was he…?” Glory held up her hands, making claws of her fingers, and snarled, pulling her upper lip back from her teeth.

  “You’re cute.” Gabe grinned and patted her on the head. “Yes, Sheriff Giordano was a shifter.”

  Why did that last name sound familiar?

  Gabe must have understood her confused expression. “The old sheriff was the father of Dr. Adrian Giordano.”

  She’d been around the Pumas enough now to know that Adrian Giordano was one of the rulers of the Pride. The Alpha and Curana led the pride, with their Betas, Simon and Becky Holt. Then there was the Marshal, Dr. Giordano, who ruled over the physical well-being of the Pride. He was the one who saw to it that all of them were safe and controlled any enforcers needed to protect them all. His Second was Gabe.

  Gabe’s mate, Sarah, was the Omega, a woman who could sense the emotional well-being of the Pride and, in some cases, manipulate their emotions, calming ongoing feuds or shoring up a Puma’s flagging self-esteem. Tabby had told her once that Sarah had walked up to Alex and stopped him from going into a rage when he discovered that Tabby had nearly been raped. Glory had seen Alex and Ryan shifted. She knew how large and angry the Grizzlies could be.

  And Sarah had tamed the beast to her hand. That was one scary power…and one awful responsibility. Glory was glad Bears didn’t have Omegas. She’d hate to think that she might accidentally wind up wielding power over someone else’s emotions when her own were such a roller-coaster. Glory knew she had no business messing in someone else’s head.

  “All right.” Gabe led Ryan and Glory into the back room. Cyn and Tabby would watch the shop while Glory answered Gabe’s questions. Gabe set the file folder on the break table and took a seat. “Tell me what you remember.”

  Glory sat across from him, not surprised when Ryan took the seat next to her. She took a deep breath and began. “When my sister and I were sixteen, she disappeared.”

  Gabe nodded and opened up his notebook. “Go on. She went to the library on…” He opened the file folder and took a quick look through the papers there. “August twenty-sixth.”

  “Yeah.” Glory twirled some of her hair around her finger. It helped calm her, the powder-blue curls so unlike her twin’s pale blonde hair. “I didn’t want to go. I wanted to go shopping with Cyn. So Hope left without me, and my father wasn’t happy about it.”

  “She went alone?”

  “Yes. We had a huge argument about it. My mother was still married to my father at that time, and tried to intervene, but we’d learned by then that she didn’t have any real power over us. It was my father who held it all.”

  “He was abusive toward you.”

  “He would beat us, but no one believed us when we tried to tell them what he was doing. He was a man of the cloth, a preacher. No one wanted to believe he was abusing his children.”

  “No one except Cyn and her mother, who took you in when your family abandoned you.”

  “Mrs. Reyes is more my mom than my biological parent ever was.” Glory grinned, hoping they didn’t see through the sharpness to the pain. “And Cyn is more a nagging dad.”

  “I heard that!”

  Glory rolled her eyes. Cyn’s hearing had gotten super-scary-good recently, ever since her mate had claimed her and turned her into a Kodiak. “Good!” she bellowed back.

  Ryan stuck his finger in his ear with a wince.

  Grinning, Gabe shook his head at her. “All right. So you go shopping with Cyn—”

  “Nope. I never made it. My dad got a hold of me and grounded me.”

  Gabe’s brows rose as he flipped through the papers again. “The notes here say you went out with Cyn.”

  “That’s what my father told the officer.”

  Gabe’s gaze hardened. “What did you tell the officer?”

  “The officer never spoke to me.”

  Gabe swore under his breath. “He was a member of your father’s congregation.”

  “Sorry, Gabe.” She hoped the man had retired by now, but if not, Gabe might have to sanction a seasoned officer for not speaking to a possible witness. “If it helps, I think he told the officer that I was too traumatized by Hope’s disappearance to speak.”

  “What was the truth?” Ryan’s voice was dangerously soft.

  “I was black and blue.” Glory tugged on her curl. “Look, my father was very good at making me seem like the bad child, the wild one who needed to be punished constantly. He hated that I was friends with Cyn, that I wanted a tattoo or my ears pierced. I wasn’t godly enough to be his child, and he made sure I was the example the others didn’t want to live up to. Even Hope couldn’t stop him from taking things out on me, and he adored her.”

  Gabe’s jaw clenched. “You were identical?”

  Glory nodded. “She always dressed the way he wanted and wore her hair the way he wanted, to keep him from hurting her.”

 
“Do you think he did other things to her?”

  God, how many times had she asked herself that over the last few years? “I don’t know. She was always quiet, withdrawn, but it got worse as we grew older. I just thought she was trying to stay off my dad’s radar.”

  “Do you think your father had anything to do with her disappearance?”

  She shrugged. “He lost his mind when we couldn’t find her. I’ve never seen him that angry. And he blamed me, like he’d hoped I would be the one taken and not her.”

  Gabe tapped his pen against the table, his expression grim. “Is it possible that what happened to her was meant for you?”

  She hated to do it, but she nodded. “Yes. If my father was the one behind it, then yes.”

  “All right. Walk me through everything you remember before she disappeared, the day she went to the library, and the days afterward.”

  Glory nudged Ryan. “Can you get me some water? This is going to take a while.”

  Ryan softly kissed her forehead. “I’m here for you, sweetheart.”

  “You shouldn’t be.” She closed her eyes. God, why did she keep trying to push him away? She was such a masochist.

  “But I am, and I’m not going anywhere.” He got up and grabbed a bottle of water out of the mini fridge. “Go on. Tell him what he needs to know.”

  She opened the bottle and took a sip before obeying Ryan’s request. “Before she left, everything seemed normal.” She snorted. “Normal for us, anyway. We all went to school, we all came home and did our homework. We hung out with our friends and gossiped about boys.”

  “Your brother and sisters acted normally?”

  “Before Hope went missing? Sure. Temp tried to keep the peace between us, but even he couldn’t keep our dad off us if he decided we needed to be punished.” She fiddled with the bottle cap, refusing to look at Gabe. “Temp was nothing like our dad. He was the one who did all the dad things, like making sure we got to school on time and lecturing us about boys.” She smiled wistfully. “And he doted on Faith.”

  “Your youngest sister.”

  Glory bit her lip. “I hope…” Ryan took hold of her hand, and only then did she realize how badly she was trembling. “I hope Temp kept our dad off her.”

  “Why didn’t your mother gain custody?”

  Glory finally looked at Gabe. “Because doormats don’t get anything but stepped on.”

  Gabe nodded once. “All right. Everything was normal right up until Hope went to the library. That day, did any of your family react oddly? Was there anything strange, anything out of place?”

  Glory tried hard to remember the details of that day, but everything up until the moment they all realized Hope wasn’t coming home was a blur. “I spent the day in my room, bruised and sulking. Temp brought me lunch and Faith tried singing to me through the door before my father screamed at her to stop. Dinner came and went, but Hope didn’t come home.”

  “Then what?”

  “The cops came and took a statement from my dad. They declared her missing because she was a minor, and they wanted to get her face out to the surrounding police precincts. But they never found her.”

  “Your father left town when you were eighteen and left you behind.”

  Glory hated thinking about that time. She’d been left in the cold with the clothes on her back, beaten black and blue and with five dollars in her wallet. Thank God for Mrs. Reyes, and thank God for Cyn, because otherwise Glory would have been homeless. “Yeah.”

  “The years in between must have been hard.”

  Ryan was still holding her hand, but at that he glared at Gabe. “I’d imagine so, if her dad blamed her for her sister’s disappearance.”

  Gabe sighed. “I have to know this stuff, Ryan. The family is the first place we look when a child goes missing, even a teenager like Hope.”

  “It’s okay, Ryan.” Glory leaned her head against his arm briefly. “I’m okay.”

  He huffed out a breath, but it didn’t sound quite human.

  Glory ignored him. “My dad became vicious to all of us, but especially me. My mother ran, just disappeared one night while we were sleeping.”

  Gabe’s brows rose. “Disappeared.”

  “We got post cards from her. I think she’s in Phoenix.”

  Gabe made a note. “Temp?”

  “Stuck around, mostly for me and Faith.” She sighed. “Faith is eighteen. With any luck, they’re both free of my dad.”

  “I’m going to try and find them, see what they know.”

  “I have no idea where they went when they left Halle. My dad didn’t exactly care if I could get a hold of them or not.”

  Gabe’s smile was cold. “Then I will make him care.”

  Ryan’s smile was just as vicious as Gabe’s. She had the feeling that if Pastor Walsh ever returned to Halle, he’d be the victim of a bear mauling, and she found she couldn’t care less. Any love she’d once had for her father had long since been beaten out of her.

  “Good.”

  Chapter Five

  Ryan managed to catch Gabe before he got too far from Cynful Tattoos. He needed to catch the sheriff before he climbed into his patrol car. “Hey, I wanted to talk to you.”

  Gabe stopped at the door of his car and eyed him for a moment before sighing. “You want to help in the hunt.”

  Ryan nodded. “Wouldn’t you, if it was your mate’s sister who was missing?”

  “Fuck yeah.” Gabe jerked his head toward Frank’s Diner. “Let’s grab some coffee and chat.”

  “Thanks, Gabe.” Ryan would have tried to go it alone, but he had Glory to think about now. He couldn’t allow her to think that he’d left even for a second, not until she got it through her head that Ryan would rather cut off important body parts than leave her.

  The two men entered the diner, and Ryan grimaced. The new waitress was a perky brunette with a big smile and bigger tits, but he much preferred the one who’d been forced by circumstances beyond her control to quit. His baby sister, Chloe, had loved working here and at the veterinarian’s clinic where she hoped to someday become a vet. Those dreams, like this job, were gone now, lost to a brutal beating that had nearly killed her and left her with problem hands and a speech impediment. Chloe had only survived thanks to the intervention of Bunny and Julian, something Ryan would never forget.

  The waitress seated them far enough away from the rest of the diners that Gabe and Ryan could enjoy a private discussion. Gabe must use this place often for quiet chats. It was the place he’d first questioned Bunny when they’d arrived in Halle, and was one of the most popular eateries in the town.

  They ordered coffee, and waited until the waitress was out of earshot. “All right.” Gabe folded his hands on the table. “Talk to me.”

  “I want to be involved in the hunt for Hope.”

  “You think Glory is in danger?”

  “If we poke the hornet’s nest, something might come out to sting her.” Ryan wasn’t going to let his mate hurt.

  “Agreed, but—”

  Ryan held up his hand. “You’re in charge. I’m not stupid. I’m not a law enforcement officer or a Hunter, so I’m leaving it up to you.”

  “But you could be.”

  Ryan’s brows rose. “I’m no Hunter.”

  “Your instincts are good. You could be in law enforcement.”

  Ryan started to laugh. “I’m an accountant.”

  “Yet you managed to track that rogue Alpha all on your own.”

  Ryan’s laughter cut off, his eyes shifting to his Bear’s. Whenever he thought about what that son of a bitch ex-Alpha had done to his mate he wanted to rip him to shreds all over again. “I wasn’t tracking him because he was Tabby’s stalker.”

  “I know.” Gabe’s voice hardened. “That doesn’t mean you won’t be an asset on this case.”

  Ryan’s eyes returned to their normal human blue, his Bear backing down instantly. Ryan’s Bear was calmed by the anger in Gabe’s voice. Gabe had been just as out
raged over the pain Glory suffered as Ryan had been, and the knowledge that a Hunter agreed with him soothed his beast.

  Hunters were a group of men and women sanctioned by the shifter Senate to hunt rogue shifters down. Rogues threatened the fabric of shifter society, either by almost outing their existence to the humans around them or by going after other shifters. The man who’d hurt his mate had been rogue, hurting the people around Tabby in order to hurt her. More often than not, a Hunter would be forced to kill the rogue in question. If the ex-Alpha hadn’t been rogue, Ryan would have been labeled a rogue himself for killing him. Instead, the Hunter had approved the kill, and had made sure the Senate had no room for complaint.

  “Glory’s also been getting presents left on her doorstep.”

  Gabe’s brows rose. “Oh, really?”

  “I didn’t scent anything around, but we know some shifters are good at masking their scents.”

  “A Fox?”

  “Or another shifter who’s learned how to hunt.”

  Gabe snarled. “A rogue Hunter.”

  This time it was Ryan who was shocked. “Your Hunter instincts are going off.”

  Gabe nodded. “Which is one of the reasons why I’m not fighting you on this. Something isn’t right. There have been too many attacks on the girls, and the whole Gary thing still isn’t completely resolved.”

  “Still?” Tabby’s stalker had almost raped her in the woods. Twice. He was lucky to still be alive. Hell, if it had been Ryan, he wouldn’t be. But the Alpha had ordered Bunny to stand down, to allow the shifter Senate to dispense justice to Gary. “He still hasn’t told you who his Alpha is?”

  “No. He’s kept his mouth shut and his head down. He’ll do time for what he tried to do to Tabby, but that’s it.”

  “Shit.”

  “Add in Hope’s disappearance and the presents on Glory’s doorstep and I’m worried.”

  Ryan’s skin crawled. “You think Hope was attacked by a shifter?”