Flamingo Fugitive (Supernatural Bounty Hunters 5) (5 page)

Chapter Eight

“Boo!  Bring back the stripper!” howled a particularly aggressive she-wolf.  She appeared to be the spokesperson for the rowdy she-wolf bachelorette party.  The members of which were sporting feather boas, silver plastic cowboy hats and were louder than a group of football fans whose team had just lost.

“Sorry ladies,” he called giving them a devilish grin.  The grin made most women go weak at the knees. 
These were not most women
.  They were drunk wolf shifters, and most of them were women who were mated and not given to cheating on their mates.  This was the only opportunity they had to look at another man’s wang without it being weird.  They were not going to let this opportunity go to waste.

“We want the stripper!” sobbed another, verging on the teary phase of drunkenness.

Stone finished cuffing the pouting cougar and was now fielding comments, insults and various things being thrown at him.  It had started with women throwing food at him, then progressed to their shoes and now seemed to have descended into bottles of alcohol.

He roared with the full force of his rhino as he deflected a bottle of whisky. 
That thing was full – it was a terrible waste of whisky
.  They quieted and looked like a mixture of petulant and pouting schoolgirls.

“Look, ladies,” he started.

“Boo!  Let him finish his act!” called the loudest one of the group.  She was also the oldest and was sporting a t-shirt that said ‘grandmother of the bride’. 
Yeesh
.

Sadly some of the other she-wolves picked this up and started chanting ‘let him finish’.  Leslie, the blonde stripped with a Farrah Fawcett do, flicked his hair and scowled.

“Ladies,” said Stone, patiently as his rhino prepared to bolt.  He could stay and fight, but they were women –
they’d probably tear him apart
.  “This guy missed his court date.  You wanna explain what you’re on trial for?” he asked blondie.

The man huffed and looked at the ground, sullenly. 

“He’s on trial for stealing money from the women he strips for.  Whenever he does a bachelorette party, he waits until his clients are passed out, and then he robs them.”

The she-wolves stopped chanting and glared at the stripper with murderous intent.  Okay, that probably wasn’t a good idea.  Best he make it to the exit quickly.

“I’m a bounty hunter,” he explained.

“Ooh!” they all chorused as one.

“And I…”

“You’re hot!” called one woman.

Stone smiled almost modestly.  “Thank you, but…”

“Take your top off!” called another.

“No take your pants off!” screamed another.

“Show us your muscles!”

“Show us what rhinos hide in their pants!” cackled the grandmother.

Stone gaped at the advancing women while his rhino sucked in a breath

*

“You bitch!” snarled Michael.

“I told you to get off of me,” said Francine coldly.  In her defense, it was his own fault for leaving such an ugly, and sharp award statue on his coffee table in the first place.

He came at her, determined to ravish her and she struck.  Now he had the Playa Lunar Filmmakers’ Society Award for Excellence sticking out of his shoulder.  In her defense, who makes a statue that is basically a small replica of a sword? 
What’s that about?

Michael wobbled around the room, the statue indiscriminately still attached to his shoulder.  “I’m bleeding you fucking whore!” he growled.

Francine smoothed out her dress.  “See, if I were a whore, this wouldn’t have happened,” she said with a lot more calm and confidence than she felt.  Flamingos were arty, attention-grabbing types, and in a crisis, they tended to flap about and panic.  Her inner bird was doing just that, and Francine was having a hard time keeping it together. 
It was a good job she was an actress
.  She hoped he couldn’t see her trembling.  Thankfully, he had bigger things to worry about.

She pulled out her phone, waited for it to switch on – it was an ancient flip phone model, so it took a while – and then she called for an ambulance.  “You’ll be fine,” she said with forced cheerfulness.  “An ambulance is on its way, and it didn’t do any lasting damage.  Your shifter genes will heal that right up.”

Michael eyed her furiously and grabbed the wine bottle.  “You dumb bitch!  I’ll make sure you never work in this town again.”

Francine let out a squawk of disgust.  “That’s not fair!”

“Nobody does this to Michael St. Fontaine!” he howled, his hyena pushing to the surface.  “Nobody!”

He threw the wine bottle at her and she scuttled away. 
She was getting the hell out of there!

*

“Whoo-hoo!  Take it all off!” cried the grandmother wolf shifter.

Stone tried to envision his own grandmother acting in that way and repressed a shudder.  Grandma Stone was possibly the most matronly woman ever created.  Plus she was a rhino shifter, so she was big and stocky and looked like a walking chest freezer.  No, if she were there right now, she’d cuff everyone’s ears and tell them to behave themselves.  Then she’d give them a speech about how this kind of behavior would embarrass their creator.  Shifters didn’t tend to be overly religious; they had their own customs, but a lot believed that there was some kind of deity for every species of shifter – or a creator.  Some people thought that shifters were just created when humans crossbred with wild animals.  But they were also the kind of people who wiggled their eyebrows lasciviously while they said this and invariably laughed at fart jokes, so they were generally ignored.

He dragged himself away from his thoughts and wriggled his butt.  “Sorry, I’m not much of a dancer, ladies,” he called while thrusting his hips.  There was a collective ooh swiftly followed by giggles.

Yes, unable to ever disappoint the ladies, Stone courageously volunteered to take the place of their stripper.  He could have just let the actual stripper finish his act, but the she-wolves didn’t seem overly cordial towards the cougar shifter since they assumed he was going to try and rob them. 

So he cuffed Leslie to the toilet, took off his clothes and started dancing for all he was worth.  It wasn’t like he had anything to be ashamed of – in fact, he was a step up from the stripper they hired.  His rhino was snorting in disbelief, but he couldn’t deny that the attention was nice, plus, the fact that the horny she-wolves were throwing money at him didn’t hurt. 

“C’mon, baby, shake that booty!”  That was one of the bridesmaids.  She was practically licking her lips and winking at him.  Stone give her an extra hip jerk, and she growled, sexily.

Yeah, this was turning out better than he thought.  Hell, he needed to thank Mia and Zara for this!

*

“Oww!  Do they have to be so tight?”

The officer grunted and ignored her protests.

Yeah, this was turning out worse than she thought.

One minute Francine was up for a new part in a movie.  The next, a horny hyena shifter was trying to mount her.  Which led to some light stabbing.  Then, because she was upset, as she left, she flung her purse against his car.  If she weren’t so upset and trying to deal with a flapping inner flamingo she might have remembered the fact that she kept a couple of rocks in her bag, just in case she were ever attacked by muggers.  Which, in her neighborhood, was highly likely.  However, she didn’t remember.  The handbag went straight through the car window, and now Francine was under arrest and being manhandled into a pair of too-tight handcuffs.  Or perhaps woman-handled, or even bear-handled.  The she-bear was unbelievably butch and unrelentingly gruff.

Francine tried to twist her hands into a more comfortable position as the she-bear pushed her into a squad car.  She watched through the window as a whining and bitching Michael was hauled away in an ambulance.  Yeesh, he was going to be fine.  She on the other hand…

As her flamingo whimpered, Francine considered that on the plus side, at least she was getting a ride.

Chapter Nine

Stone grinned and slung his arm around the lissome she-wolf, Cady.  He breathed in the heady mixture of their entwined, lusty, aroused scents.  His rhino grumbled in a bored way and turned his back to go to sleep. 
Meh, he didn’t know what he was missing
.

He’d spent a few very enjoyable hours partying with the bachelorettes, and had even been given a drunken invite to the wedding.  Although the bride joked that she doubted she would be able to recognize him with all his clothes on.  She then collapsed and was carried home by her maid of honor.

Stone – still stone sober - had wrangled himself a bridesmaid, and after dumping a very angry Leslie at the cops, he was now bringing her home.  Thankfully, she wasn’t quite as drunk as everyone else at the bachelorette party.  No, she said she wanted to enjoy watching him taking all his clothes off again for a private party.

Cady slipped her hand over his ass and squeezed.  “Mmmm, that is one tight booty.  Do you want to see mine?” she teased, dirtily.

“Ah, babe,” he crooned.  “Ah no.”

“What’s up?” she asked, rubbing her hand over his groin, thinking they were still playing.  “You don’t want to see mine?”  She pouted.

“No… I mean, yes… fuck.”

By now as they approached his apartment door, a familiar scent was invading his senses, covering the deliciousness of Cady’s dwindling desire and really making him dislike cinnamon and nutmeg. 
Why couldn’t she have smelt like a pair of sweaty socks?

“Stone!  There you are, I was worried.”  Caitlyn approached him, and Cady stiffened slightly. 

“You were?” asked Stone in complete bewilderment.  Had Caitlyn left something at his apartment?  He would have brought it to her – all she had to do was ask.

Caitlyn’s smile tightened as she took a long scathing look at Cady.  His rhino rumbled to attention as the mood turned from lusty to downright hostile in the flick of a damn mountain lion’s tail.

“Who’s this?” said Caitlyn, crisply.

“Ah…” started Stone, trying to keep up.  His rhino may have been ready to tear into the middle of a catfight – or a cat and dog fight as this would be the case – but Stone was still jogging to keep up with the situation. 

“I’m Cady,” hissed the she-wolf.  “Who the hell are you?”

“Caitlyn,” replied the lioness, sweetly.

The two females looked at him expectantly.  One was furious and ready to storm away.  The other was smiling, benignly as if she knew he was about to tell the other to push off.  He’d have preferred the expressions to switch between the two women.

“Ah… Caitlyn, what…”

“Will she be joining us?” murmured Caitlyn, with more than a sultry hint of suggestion.

“No she fucking won’t!” snarled Cady.  With that she slapped Stone around the face, and he didn’t even try to stop her.  He could see how it looked; he didn’t blame her.

Cady sneered at the innocent looking lioness and stomped away muttering something about perverts.  Stone felt his muscles rippling as fury howled through his rhino.  He wasn’t terrifically angry about not getting laid that night – there’d be other nights, there’d be other women
.
  But it was the triumphant and amused look on Caitlyn’s face that enraged him.  It was the fact that she was here – at his apartment; the fact that she felt the need to insult the she-wolf and not to mention getting him slapped in the face. 
She-wolves could pack a damn good slap into their palms!

He stepped away from her, less he do something unforgivable and shift into a rampaging rhino.  He wasn’t prone to lose his temper.  He was an alpha male, but he wasn’t violent on a whim.  When you happened to be stronger than just about everyone around you, you had to be in control.  But this woman made him want to lose it.

Stone breathed in and out, grunting and flaring his nostrils slightly.  When he could face it, he looked at Caitlyn, who had a simpering, eyelash fluttering expression on her face.

“Caitlyn,” he growled.

To his shock, Caitlyn slapped him as well.  He was so surprised that he didn’t even see it coming.  It was so
unexpected
.  He was faster than Caitlyn, but slapping him was so…
crazy
.

“I’m very disappointed in you!” she wailed and then ran away, sobbing.

Stone and his rhino gaped at her open mouthed and continued to stare at the empty corridor in confusion until Mrs. Lewinsky nudged him aside with her walker.  She was an insomniac sloth shifter and walked all over the building at night.

“Evening Mr. Stone,” she said in a croaky yet cheerful voice.

“Uhhh…”

“Saw your two ladies running out of here,” she chuckled.

“Yeah…”  He was aware that he must have looked and sounded like a slack-jawed idiot.

“I’d watch out for that lioness if I were you,” she called out over her shoulder as she shuffled away.  “Cut her in half, and you’d find the words crazy beans through and through.”  She cackled as she left him standing in the hallway.

Yeah, he was also starting to come to that conclusion.  He rubbed his twice-slapped cheek and vaguely thought about the fact that he ought to start worrying.  But then his pockets crinkled, and he remembered that he had over two hundred dollars in singles in there.  The night hadn’t exactly ended on the high he was hoping for, but he’d caught his skip and made a nice little wad of money.  It was nice to know that if he ever was hard up for cash that he could turn to stripping or even exotic dancing. 
He’d worry about Caitlyn tomorrow.

*

The lion shifter tried to smile kindly, but Francine just gave him a helpless look in return.  Her flamingo huffed sadly and considered whether she would get the lead in the prison production of Oklahoma.

Detective Wyatt Leeman was trying to be benevolent.  He had the least dangerous perp in front of him he had ever met since he was forced to arrest the seventy-three-year-old panda shifter for bank robbery.  That was all a misunderstanding – she just had a candy bar in her pocket and didn’t speak much English.

Francine Sweeting had been arrested for destruction of property and attempted murder.  But none of this seemed to have sunk in yet.  The moment the cops found her frowning, at the destruction she had wrought on the Porsche, she admitted it was her.  She admitted to stabbing Michael St. Fontaine and breaking the window of the Porsche.  The fact that she did those things surprised her more than it did them.

Wyatt cleared his throat and closed her file.  “You’ll go before a judge in the morning, and you can enter your plea.”

Francine nodded.  “I think I’m going to say not guilty.”

He raised an eyebrow as his inner lion huffed.  “You already confessed.”

She shrugged.  “Oh yes, I did those things but I didn’t mean to cause any harm.”

“Well, maybe you should discuss it with your lawyer.  When is he arriving?”

“Well, we talked on the phone, and he said he’d arrive early in the morning.”

Wyatt tried not to look too pained.  “This is really a serious matter, you really should…”

Francine waved a hand.  “It’s no big deal.  Once everyone hears my side of the story, I’ll be let off.  I’ve been an extra on Playa Lunar at Law a few times.  I’m pretty au fait with this kind of thing.  Technically, I haven’t done anything wrong.”

She was a juror a couple of times and actually played a defendant in one episode – only for a few moments, and she didn’t have any lines.  She spent hours in make up getting temporary tattoos applied to her skin.  She was on screen for twelve seconds, and it took her twelve days to wash off the fake tats.

Her lawyer was a friend of her best friend, Felicia’s husband’s brother.  He was a flamingo, too.  You actually saw quite a few flamingo lawyers – they liked showing off in court.  The difference to her chosen profession was that the pay was a lot better.  However, one of his disgruntled clients did try to shoot him once. 

He was doing this as a favor, so Francine was just grateful for any time he could give her.  Besides, she was sure that everyone was just making a mountain out of a potato chip.  This whole thing was nothing.  It was all going to be
fine
.  Yes, she’d just made her flamingo believe that, too.

“So can you give me a ride home?”  She smiled at the detective, hopefully.

He blinked at her in surprise.  “Ah, no, you have to stay here.”

Francine frowned.  “But I don’t have a change of clothes.”  She waved her hand up and down her body for emphasis.  “And he did get blood on me.”

“You can’t leave,” he told her, patiently.

She thought about it for a few moments.  “But, how about if an officer just takes me home to get a change of clothes?”

He shook his head.  “You really can’t leave.”

Hmmm, they were entering water not quite covered by her extra roles in TV shows.  Now would probably be a good time to have her lawyer present to advise her if what the cop was saying was actually true.  “Well, who says so?  Let me just have a word with them.”  She’d speak to his boss if necessary and get this all straightened out.  She wasn’t a natural born flirt, but she was good at pretending.

“Look, your lawyer can bring in anything you need before you see the judge.”

Oh no, that wouldn’t do at all –
her body took maintenance
.  “If I’m going to see a judge I do need to look my best – I need time to prepare.”  She didn’t have her special pillow with the lavender oil, and she didn’t have her avocado and almond facemask - that she sometimes ate if she became really hungry and ran out of food.  And sometimes when she didn’t.  It was delicious and excellent for the skin.

“I’m sure you’ll look fine,” he mumbled.  The huge lion shifter blushed slightly, and goddess help, her she basked in that blush.  It was really a pick me up after a crappy night.

“Fine, is one thing,” she said, gently.  “But I need to dazzle him.”

“It’s the law that you stay here.”

“Well, what if I spoke to your supervisor?”  She didn’t want to get him in trouble, but surely there was a way around this.

His forehead wrinkled, probably through the confusion that she didn’t seem able to grasp this concept.  “My captain would tell you the same thing.”

Francine threw up her hands theatrically.  “Even if I told him what happened?  This whole thing wasn’t my fault.  I mean, frankly, that guy was going to… to…” 

For someone who just a few hours ago was waxing lyrical about ‘love juice’, she had a lot of trouble saying the word.  Just thinking about it brought back those few seconds where she really worried he was going to force himself on her.  She felt tears prickle her eyes, and her flamingo tried to soothe her.  She felt exhausted.  It had been a long night, and she just wanted to crawl into bed. 
And top it off her mascara wasn’t even waterproof!

The detective passed her a handkerchief, and Francine giggled through her tears.  “Monogrammed handkerchiefs?  Really?”

He shrugged, nonchalantly, but the blazing hue of his blush deepened.  “Would you like me to fetch a female officer?”

Francine immediately thought of the mountainous she-bear.  “No, I’m fine, just… overtired.”  She carefully dabbed at her eyes, determined that they wouldn’t puff up before her appearance tomorrow.

“I’ll get someone to show you to a holding cell – it’s late, so you might as well stay here tonight.  I’ll make sure you don’t have to share with anyone, and I’ll get you some, ah, things.  Any… female things you may need.”

He was way too embarrassed by this she reflected, stifling another laugh.  Apparently he could look at dead bodies and catch murderers, but the idea of tampons and pantyhose turned him into a teenager.  She considered that he was kind of cute, in a blonde, ruddy pink-faced kind of way. 

“Thank you, that’s very nice,” she said putting him out of his misery

“It’s my pleasure.  Make me a list, I’ll be back in a few moments.”  He paused at the door.  Because he was already embarrassed and decided it couldn’t get any worse he added, “You know, I saw you in the stage production of Robin Hood last year.”

Francine smiled automatically.  It was a reflex rather than an actual smile borne of pleasure.  The production had been a feminist reimagining where all the male roles were assayed by female actors and vice versa. 
The reviews had been scathing
.

He smiled, bashfully.  “You made an excellent Alana a Dale.”  She was originally up for the role of Wilhelmina Scarlet, but when the director realized she could sing, she switched roles.

“You’re very kind.  It was an experimental production…”  She felt the need to explain, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“You have a wonderful singing voice.”  He seemed to find his blush again and excused himself.

Francine blew her nose noisily. 
Huh
.  A little bit of sunshine on a dark night.