Hard To Bear (12 page)

“How’s my favorite redhead?” he asked.  His voice was so deep, so rich, and so damned sexy that it sent a flood of heat rushing through her.

He’s lying to me
about why he’s in town, and he dumped me this morning to run off to deal with his crazy lady friend, she reminded herself firmly.  And all he wanted was a summer fling, anyway; he’d flat out told her that.  There’s no point in dragging this out any further.  She already found herself struggling to keep her mind on her work, with Flint’s face popping into her mind and constantly distracting her. 

“Fine,” she said, forcing herself to sound cool and neutral.

“I had an amazing time last night.  I’d like to see you again.  Are you up for dinner tonight?”

She swallowed hard.   Be strong, she scolded herself. 

“I don’t think I can make it.  I found some interesting information at the house that Adrian was renting, and I need to go talk to my publisher about it.  There were a bunch of notebooks and a journal that he’d hidden in his room, where he talked about some land parcel purchases he was investigating.  I need to get them back to the office so I can start tracking down the owners of those parcels of land.”

“I thought you were
going to leave the investigating to the police.” Flint’s voice had suddenly gone cold and hard.

“I never said that,” she said.  “
You suggested it. I ignored you.  I’m a reporter, Flint. That’s what we do.  We investigate.”

“Can’t you just give it a little more time?”

“No, I can’t.  There are too many mysteries here, and I feel like there’s a common thread tying everything together, and maybe it will lead to the people who have gone missing.  I have to go, Flint, I’m driving on these windy country roads. I don’t want to hit a tree.”  She hung up her cell phone and tossed it in to her purse.

She
was almost back at the center of town when she suddenly realized blue lights were flashing behind her.

She glanced at her
speedometer.  She was going thirty miles an hour in a thirty mile an hour zone.

Puzzled, she waited as the sheriff’s deputy strode up to her car.

“License and registration?” the wolf shifter asked her.

She handed them over, annoyed.  He went back to his car, and she sat there waiting until he returned
and handed them back to her.

“May I ask why you pulled me over?” she asked.

“One of your brake lights is out.”

“It is?” She was puzzled.  “I hadn’t noticed.”
  She also wondered how he’d noticed. It was daytime. She’d been cruising at a steady speed, and hadn’t stepped on her brakes. 

“Go stand behind the car. I’ll show you.”

She sighed and slid out of her seat, and walked behind the car as he got in the driver’s seat.  He started the car up, and after a moment, she saw both brake lights flashed.  She walked back to the car.

“They’re working fine,” she said, suspicious. What the heck was going on here?

He turned off the ignition and slid out of the car.  “You must have some kind of short in the electrical system, or maybe it’s the bulb.  You should get that looked at.”

He walked back to his patrol car, climbed in, and drove off.

Coral sat there, puzzled, sure that he’d been up to something, but not sure what.

Then a sneaking suspicion flared up.  She grabbed her purse and searched through it.  The journal and the notepads were gone.

She hurled the purse on to the floor, swearing at the top of her lungs.

Then she picked up her cell phone and called Flint.

“Did you tell the sheriff’s office to have me pulled over?” she demanded.

There was a long pause, and she gritted her teeth with anger.

“Coral, I’m telling you that you need to back off this story for now.  If you’d just be patient, you might very well find that you’ll get what you need.” 

“Be patient? Tell that to the people whose kids are missing!” Furious, Coral hung up the phone.

Then she drove back to the newspaper, marched into the publisher’s office, and told him what had just happened.  She left out Flint’s involvement, and the fact that she suspected he was an Enforcer.

“How do you think the sheriff’s office knew to look for those notebooks?” Mr. Brewster asked.

“Well, this being Blue Moon Junction, anyone could have seen me going to the house that Adrian had rented.  If there is some kind of active investigation, maybe the police are even having that house watched to see if anyone else tries to break in,” she suggested.  That could even have been what happened; after all, Flint hadn’t specifically admitted that he was the one who snitched on her. 

Mr. Brewster
frowned. “You know, I originally thought Adrian’s mother was over-reacting, but obviously you’ve stumbled on to something here.  I’m going to call the sheriff’s office, and then we’ll decide what to do next.”

She returned to her desk, where very shortly, she could hear angry shouts coming from the newspaper office, with phrases like “freedom of the press” and “harassment” hurled around at high volume.

Frederick didn’t even glance up when Coral walked by.  His cell phone was lying on his desk next to his keyboard, and he kept glancing from the computer screen to the cell phone and back again.

             
Bettina wandered up.  “Blanche called to say she’s picking up some crullers and she’ll be by in a few minutes,” she said.  She surreptitiously glanced at Frederick, who didn’t look up from his computer.   She stood there for an awkward minute before she finally said “Hi, Frederick.”

             
“Hey,” he muttered, staring at the cell phone as if he could will it to ring.

             
Bettina turned and stormed off.

             
“You’re a moron,” Coral said.  “And you’re going to die a virgin at this rate. And you’ll deserve it.”

             
“What?” Frederick glanced up at her.  All his attention was focused on the cell phone. “Did you say something?”

             
“Why were you rude to Bettina just now?”

             
“Bettina? I didn’t mean to be rude. I told you, I like her. She’s way cool.  She likes all the same video games as me.  It’s just…Melinda. Wow. You know what I mean?”

             
“I know she’s using you because she really likes Flint and she was trying to make him jealous by bringing you to that restaurant.”

             
His face flushed red and his expression turned sullen.  “She has called me several times since then.   She loves to talk to me.  She thinks my work is fascinating.”

             
“Just watch yourself,” Coral sighed. “Has she actually suggested getting together again? Has she even let you kiss her?”

             
“You’re just jealous!” Frederick snatched his cell phone off the desk, and stormed off.

             
Yeah, that’s it, Coral thought in exasperation.  I can’t resist a skinny, socially awkward virgin.

             
Mr. Brewster walked up to her.   “Tomorrow, you’re going to start investigating who bought those parcels of property.  And give Interpol and the Shifter’s Council a call, and see what kind of comment you can get on the missing people.”

             
“When would we run a story?”

             
He shook his head.   “There’s a story there, but we don’t know what it is yet.   I’d like to nail down who bought all those pieces of property.  And at this point, we don’t yet have proof that the property sales are connected to the disappearances.”

             
Coral sighed and turned back to her computer.  She was frustrated. She knew that the disappearances were connected; she just couldn’t prove it yet.  Her phone rang and she glanced down; it was Flint calling.  Scowling, she turned the phone off and tossed it into her purse. 

Over the past year, t
here were six property purchases in the swamplands northeast of Blue Moon Junction, Crystal found by visiting the Blue Moon County tax collector.  Every purchaser was a business that appeared to be a corporation in name only, with no information available about them on the internet.  One of them had an address in Crystal Grove, a tiny town three hours drive from Coral Grove.  It was still early in the day, and Mr. Brewster suggested that Coral take a drive out there to see what she could find.

“Do you want me to come with you?” Frederick asked
.  “It could be dangerous.” He flexed his small bicep. 

Across the room, Coral saw Bettina staring at Frederick, and then deliberately turning her back and hunching over a magazine she’d been reading.

“Oh, I beg your pardon, were you talking to me? The jealous one?” Coral asked coldly, raising an eyebrow.

             
“You’re not being fair. You made it sound like I’m some kind of loser, like there’s no way that woman like Melinda would go for someone like me.  You wouldn’t like it if I said that Flint didn’t like you,” Frederick protested, sounding petulant. 

             
“From the body language I saw at the restaurant, you were clinging to her arm and she was completely ignoring you and staring at me and Flint.  If you want to make a fool of yourself, though, go ahead.  You’ll figure it out soon enough.  I just wish you weren’t hurting Bettina’s feelings in the process.”

             
“It’s just…I’ve never had anyone like Melinda even give me the time of day.  She’s like this beautiful Amazon goddess.”

             
“Bettina’s a good person, and you guys were having a great time together, and you’re going to throw it all away on a woman who is clearly using you.”

A hurt look puckered Frederick’s narrow face. 
“For your information, Melinda got called away on family business, but she still called me last night and again today.”

             
“Sounds like true love.  Good luck with that,” Coral said, as she headed out the door.  Love makes fools of us all, she thought.

             
Speaking of which…Flint had tried to call Coral half a dozen times the evening before, and she’d glanced out her window before going to bed and spotted his car parked down the block.  He was sitting out there watching.  Making sure she was safe.

             
Or was he? She suddenly wondered as she walked out to her car.  Was he watching to make sure she was safe, or just watching to see what she was up to?

             
She tried, and failed, to put him out of her mind as she drove to Crystal Grove.  The sun was shining and the back roads looped through lush green woodlands,  past citrus groves, and miles and miles of farmland.   Massive grain silos  towered over herds of cows grazing behind barbed-wire fences like a scene out of a cowboy movie.  It was beautiful, but again and again Flint’s face swam before her vision, and the memory of his hands and his mouth on her sent unwelcome ripples of desire running through her body.

Finally, she arrived at
Crystal Grove, a town so tiny it barely deserved the name.  It was nothing but a tiny collection of one story buildings clumped on either side of a rural back road.  

Coral parked in front of a feed and grain store, and quickly found the address she’d been looking for – in a small white bungalow-st
yle house on a weed choked lot.

She walked in
, and the clerk behind the desk glanced up.  He was an older human, skinny, wearing glasses. He squinted at her suspiciously. Apparently he didn’t get too many visitors.

“Can I
he’p you?” he asked.

“
I’m looking for Redbird Investments,” she said. 

He sh
ook his head. “Never heard of ‘em.”

“This is the address they gave,” she said. 
She glanced at the bank of mailboxes on the wall behind him.  “Is this an address rental business?”

He shrugged. “What if it is?”

She shot him a skeptical look. Why was he being so weird and cagey? “I imagine they’re one of your clients.  They must rent this address.”

“Like I said.” He repeated it slowly, with a hostile edge to his tone now. “Never heard of them. Who’s asking?”

“The Blue Moon Junction Tattler.  We’re doing a story on the purchase of a number of properties around our county.  One of the purchasers gave this address for their business.  That’s fine, we’ll still  put the address in our story, and say that an employee at this address denied that they’d ever heard of Redbird.”

“You can’t do that.” He tried to sound menacing, and pushed his chair back, standing and glowering at her.

“Since it’s the truth, actually, yes I can. And please, don’t try to intimidate me.  I’m a wolf.”  Actually she was feeling kind of intimidated, not by him so much, but by the fact that she was in a tiny backwoods town in the middle of nowhere, and she could practically hear the banjo music from Deliverance playing.   However, she was damned if she was going to let this jerk see that he’d rattled her cage.