Phoenix Ablaze (BBW / Phoenix Shifter Romance) (Alpha Phoenix Book 1) Read online

  He stretched out his breakfast by reading his book. The waitress knew he was good for a three-dollar tip, so she kept bringing the coffee pot. But he could be strong. He only let Susan refill his mug twice. Over in the corner, those three nurses were talking about Diana in hushed voices. Wasn’t their fault that he had phoenix hearing. But they were discussing his mate and he could no more stop himself from eavesdropping than he could transform into a wolf.

  “Something’s bugging her, all right,” the thin, pregnant one said. What was her name? Tina.

  “She’s entitled to her privacy,” said the chunkier, gray-haired one called Hazel.

  “I’m just saying.” That was Tina again.

  “If she wants to tell us, she will,” said the woman in the animal print scrubs. Ruby favored bright prints that fought with her red hair and lost. She was the boss, and her remark stopped the gossip cold.

  Susan brought over their breakfasts and in the flurry of unwrapping silverware and adjusting their plates, the ladies changed topics and began to discuss an upcoming seminar on blood thinners. Pierce paid for his meal and went out into the parking lot to retrieve his vehicle. Why was Diana upset? The trouble was he knew next to nothing about his mate. Not where she lived. Not where she was from — from her accent, not Arizona. He knew what was important, what was in her heart. That was his gift.

  He knew that she was exactly what his heart had been holding out for. The other half of his soul. He had always believed that recognizing your mate would make courtship a breeze. But it didn’t. It just raised the stakes. Normally, if you asked a woman out, and she said ‘no’, that was that. No harm, no foul. But if she was your one and only? That raised the stakes. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  His assignment to Special Forces meant he had access to the kinds of databases that civilians could only dream about. Anything and everything he needed to know about Diana was only a couple of keystrokes away. Except that he had sworn oaths that precluded him using those top secret sites for his personal use. Spying on a civilian would be a betrayal not only of his own honor, but of his country.

  He was going to have to move slowly and carefully. Find a way to meet Curvy Girl. Earn her trust and confidence and then swoop in to make her his. If she had been a phoenix too, he could have told her she was his mate and although she might have played coy, she would have been willing to play. The deep reserve he sensed in Diana could be because she didn’t fancy him or men in general. Or it could be her reaction to a stranger.

  Serenading your mate was a longstanding phoenix tradition — and one that his relatives incited was a sure-fire way to win a reluctant woman’s heart. But he couldn’t sing to Diana if he didn’t know where she lived. And he couldn’t look up her address and perch outside her home without invitation. She was going to have to invite him into her life before he could get close. Honor was a bitch.

  * * *

  Before he drove out of the restaurant parking lot Pierce checked his messages. Just in case Command and Control had called wanting their pilot back. They hadn’t. He had three missed calls from his physical therapist and one from an old buddy. Rumor had it that Col. Rivera had been successful in getting rid of Zeke Bascom after that last mission imploded. At any rate, as far as Special Forces was concerned, Hulk was history.

  Pierce ought to be grateful that after his own bloody screw-up in Syria he was getting a second chance. At least that was the promise. As soon as he was passed fit for active service, Maj. D’Angelo could expect to be asked to fly a fucking desk. His country needed fucking forms filled out in fabulous fucking triplicate. And Ace D’Angelo was the donkey turd earmarked for this stupefying stateside mission. Death come first.

  The paved road ended, and became washboard gravel as Pierce wound through the hills. He had had special shocks fitted to his SUV, but it was still a kidney-rattling ride. The cabin was only six rooms — if you excluded the bathrooms. But it sat in comfortable isolation on twenty acres that overlooked the rugged canyons and dried riverbeds of Arizona’s Navajo country.

  His father had built the family getaway to have a place to teach his children to fly. It held a lot of good memories. The first time Pierce changed into phoenix, the first time he caught a thermal and soared above the ground until mortals were little more than ants.

  Pierce parked his SUV under the trees that shaded the cabin. Away from the city, the air was clear and if not exactly cool, fresher. He made himself go through his rituals. He put his damp and sweaty gym clothes in the washing machine that occupied its own little niche in the kitchen. He had enough for a load, so he put it in. That was the rule. Part of keeping his life on an even keel, was following the rules. Particularly the ones he had made for himself.

  Next he made sure he had something to eat for lunch and for dinner. The freezer compartment had a tall stack of plastic boxes of food he had prepared himself. But the rule was, he had to cook at least once a day. He took out a portion of lasagna to thaw, and set a package of pork chops on the counter for dinner. Meals planned, laundry on, his next task was to police his living room.

  In the high desert, everything collected a layer of dust in no time. There was central air, but he didn’t like to turn it on. He usually left the windows wide open when he was home. He closed and latched them when he went out. It was probably overkill in Dry River. The small isolated community had a nonexistent crime rate. But old habits die hard. Security was in his blood.

  He had been in the Air Force his whole adult life. First the Academy after high school, and then the Air Force as a commissioned officer. Special Forces for six years. It had made him habitually organized and vigilant. Growing up a shifter in a world that did not acknowledge the paranormal had made him secretive. His whole family guarded their privacy and their paranormal abilities. Leaving his home unlocked violated every rule in his book.

  It took him a mere three minutes to put his books away, and position the coffee table so its edge ran precisely parallel to the edge of the rug. Six more minutes to dust every surface. Five minutes to dust mop every inch of exposed floor. He opened the windows, and pulled the curtains back exactly eight inches on both sides.

  Now he could return Hulk Bascom’s call. He glanced at his watch, crap on a stick, it wasn’t even fucking noon. He had to figure out better ways to fill up his day. Bascom answered on the first ring. “You encrypted, D’Angelo?” he barked into his phone.

  “Sure. What’s up?” Pierce could be curt too.

  “You still on medical leave?” Bascom demanded.

  “Yeah, I’m still on fucking medical leave. What about it?”

  “You likely to be loose another couple of weeks?” Under his habitual calm, Bascom’s deep voice was urgent.

  “Fucking psychiatrist wants me to give myself another six fucking months to recover my emotional fucking stability. Physical therapist thinks I need another sixteen sessions to regain full mobility of the fucking elbow.”

  “There’s no need for you to bottle it up, D’Angelo. If you’re pissed, man, just say so.”

  “What the hell did you call me for, Bascom? I don’t have all fucking day here.”

  Bascom snorted. “Time’s all you got, boy. We both know that. We need someone trustworthy to help out with a situation, Ace.”

  The old nickname improved Pierce’s mood. “What sort of a situation would that be, Hulk?”

  “The usual.” A piercing shriek followed by a gurgle accompanied Hulk Bascom’s answer.

  “Who’s there?” Pierce snapped.

  “My son doesn’t want to wait for lunch,” Zeke said. “Hang on a moment.” In the background, there was a rattling noise followed by soft squeaks.

  “You have a son?” Pierce asked enviously.

  “Two. And a daughter.” Hulk was smug.

  “Congratulations.” How the fuck had that damned bear pulled that off? Last Pierce knew, Bascom was a solitary old bachelor with PTSD. “Should the kid be hearing this?”

  “Probably scar hi
m for life, but he’s too young to talk. I’m in charge today. My wife’s working.” Bascom’s voice deepened with pride and possessiveness.

  “You want to call me back?”

  “Nah. Let’s get this done,” Bascom said. “The FAs have an assignment for you. If you’re interested that is.”

  Pierce immediately perked up. The FAs or Fuck Alls were a group that policed shifters gone bad. A bunch of shifters — military guys — had banded together to take down the bad guys. Because there was fuck all the cops could do about shifters turned criminal. It was true that the FAs took the law into their own hands, but with psychopathic shifters who could evade custody just by turning into an animal, it was usually the only way.

  His older brother, Lincoln, had been involved with the FAs since he had left the Air Force. Pierce knew about them, but had never participated. “Go on,” he encouraged Bascom.

  “We’re short guys in the Southwest with your skill set, Ace.”

  “Yeah?” Pierce began to rifle through the unopened mail on his desk. Three real estate agents and a purveyor of useless appliances wanted his immediate attention. He dumped them all.

  “We think we’ve gotten a solid lead on a rogue, Ace. We want you to check out a guy working in Flagstaff. Someone needs to get close enough to smell him.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I’ll send you the dossier. Encryption code: Venom.” Bascom hung up.

  The dossier arrived twenty minutes later. Pierce’s assignment was to check out a possible match for the villain who had been terrorizing women across the Southwest all summer. The Fuck Alls had noticed a pattern that the authorities had missed. If you weren’t expecting paranormal suspects, you didn’t expect paranormal behavior and you couldn’t connect the dots that linked apparently disconnected events.

  Some piece of shit was specializing in raping women who were securely locked in their homes. In each case, the cops of several jurisdictions had independently decided that the rapists had gotten access to the homes and waited inside to rape at night. Which did not explain how the houses came to be locked up tighter than a drum when the subject left.

  The rapist didn’t slit screens. He didn’t jimmy locks. He didn’t break and enter. But he slipped into houses with deadbolts, and through windows with bars. The FAs had spotted the crimes and run them through their computer program. They worked out that if the rapists were all the same guy, he probably was a snake shifter. He shifted to enter through vents and burglar bars, became human to rape, and shifted to exit. The FAs had code named him Venom.

  Half an hour after receiving the file, Pierce was on the wing. He could have used the open skies over Arizona to fly in greater phoenix, but once he reached Flagstaff he would probably need to be hawk-sized so he could surveil the subject unobtrusively. It took a considerable amount of energy to shift. Returning to human and then shifting to lesser phoenix might drain him of energy that he might later require. Better to save his strength and do the entire trip in lesser. Because you never knew what shit would go down.

  The subject of Pierce’s investigation was a paroled con. Which all by itself meant he probably wasn’t the shifter the FAs were after. Shifters were hard to tie to crimes. Even if captured, they could usually manage to escape custody. They didn’t have to do their time. Which was why the FAs were necessary if these bastards were to be stopped.

  Pierce found Brodie Purcell’s rooming house on a Flagstaff back street. He went in the open third floor window while Purcell was out at work. Presumably, Purcell had decided to leave his window open so that the brutal heat of a September afternoon didn’t turn his single room into a furnace. Pierce didn’t find any evidence that the con was breaching his parole. Unless you counted the pistol under his greasy mattress.

  He paid a visit to the factory where Purcell worked, to confirm his impression that the guy wasn’t a shifter. Since he was just about invisible to mortal eyes, Pierce flew through the open door of the loading bay of the factory where his subject worked.

  Purcell was a pimply pint-sized weasel. But that was only Pierce’s metaphor. The ferret-faced punk was no shifter. Two minutes in the rafters above the line where Purcell operated an extrusion press for a window and door manufacturer was enough to establish that his subject was only a crook who avoided soap and water. Purcell smoked and he didn’t bathe. But he was just another two-bit mortal hoodlum.

  It was a disappointing outcome for the Fuck Alls. But the organization wasn’t a bunch of out-of-control vigilantes. Whether or not Purcell kept his nose clean wasn’t their business. His parole officer and the system could deal with the grody butt-wipe. On the other hand, Pierce figured Purcell was in no position to complain that the gun under his mattress had vanished. Who knew contraband could dematerialize?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Diana went through her babysitting supplies. Batman costume for three-year-old Ricky. Check. Book for bedtime. Check. Knitting in case she decided to watch television. Check. Her own book if the game was boring. She didn’t have the same appetite for Friday night football that she had once had. Her phone began to burble from the depths of her purse. She fished it out in case it was Tina canceling or worse.

  It was her mother. “Hey,” said Alma Lowery brightly. “Did you get the time off?”

  Diana glanced at her watch. She still had twenty minutes before she needed to set out for Tina’s. She pulled out a chair at her dining table and sat down. “I didn’t. I’m sorry, Mom, I won’t be able to come for Thanksgiving after all.”

  “We haven’t seen you since Fourth of July,” Alma objected.

  “I know. But one holiday in three is all I’m guaranteed. I had the Fourth of July long weekend added to my vacation this year. I’m scheduled to work the day after Thanksgiving.”

  “Grandmom will be disappointed.” Alma’s own disappointment was evident.

  “I’ll call. And we have Skype. I can talk to the whole family on Thanksgiving.”

  “It won’t be the same,” said Alma. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too, Mom,” Diana said softly. “But Ruby did the roster through to the New Year. I have five days at Christmas. I already booked my ticket. I should get in very late the evening of the twenty-second.”

  Alma perked up a little. “That’s great. Hang on while I write it down. When do you have to go back?”

  “My flight is at 2:00 p.m. on December 27.”

  “Got it. It doesn’t seem very long,” Alma complained.

  “It isn’t. But five days is all I could swing. And since both Window Rock and Barsted are small towns, I have to spend some of that time getting to and from airports.”

  “I wish you didn’t live all the way in Arizona,” Alma said. “Have you looked for something closer to New Hampshire? Your nieces and nephews are growing up not knowing their Aunt Diana.”

  Diana made a noncommittal noise. She hadn’t looked, and she didn’t intend to look. Much as she loved her family, she also loved this new life she had made in Window Rock. It suited her.

  “There was a sale at Target. Your sister and I bought new lights for the front of the house.” Now that she had her grievance done for the evening, Alma started in on the news. “Andrew has promised to work out a new look for me at Thanksgiving.”

  “Mom! It’s still three weeks until Halloween. And six until Thanksgiving!”

  “I like to be on top of the holidays, honey. You know that,” Alma said blithely.

  Diana thought of her mother’s minute two-story house in the small coastal village of Barsted. Mom already had more lights and more illuminated Santa Clauses and reindeer than her tiny lot could handle. Her brother-in-law Andrew was going to have trouble fitting in more lights. She chuckled. “That’s an all-day project, Mom. Let the man relax.”

  “Ever since he made me swap out all my old incandescent bulbs for LEDs,” Alma continued blithely, “I’ve been able to add more vignettes.”

  Diana laughed harder. “Vignettes,” she whooped. “
You been watching too much Martha Stewart, Mom. What you have on the front of your house at Christmas time, is the gaudiest, most overblown display of Christmas lights in New Hampshire.”

  “Darn right,” Alma said pleased. “The First Congregational is hiring a bus to take the seniors around to all the best houses. We’re going to make sure the house makes the list again.”

  It was a harmless pastime. And since her sister Sophie’s husband had taken over setting up Mom’s lights, it’d been a relatively cheap hobby. “It is pretty in the snow,” Diana conceded.

  “We bought those new lights to go through the lilacs. Andrew is going to set up Frosty the Snowman over there this year. And the bushes are going to be a sort of igloo.”

  Andrew worked construction. He had a good eye for design. He was a fiend for safety. Diana was not going to worry if he was in charge. The lights would look good, there would be no bare wires, and no heavy drain on mom’s electricity bill. But she felt she ought to speak up for her hard-working brother-in-law. “It’s his holiday too, Mom,” she pointed out. “Let him relax.”

  Alma snorted. “All he’s going to do is take his beer out to the front and sit with Little Bobby and Big Bobby and work out where everything will go. He’s not going to put them up till the week after Thanksgiving. Besides, if this mild weather keeps up there will still be leaves on the trees. The boys are going to have to finish the raking for me.” Big Bobby was Diana’s older brother and Little Bobby his eldest son.

  “Is your bursitis acting up again?” Diana was concerned.

  “It’s not too bad. The garden looks pretty good right now. I cut back the peonies this week. But the maples are still holding onto most of their leaves. And the oaks haven’t gotten past turning red. I just hope those leaves fall before the snow comes. I don’t want to lose more branches.”

  “Listen, Mom,” Diana continued. “I was just getting ready to leave the house when you called.”

  “Do you have a date?” Alma asked eagerly.