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

  “Not so much. I’m babysitting Ricky while Tina and Ray have one last date before the baby comes.”

  Alma clucked her tongue. “You’re a young woman, Diana. On a Friday night, you should be going out yourself, not watching someone else’s kid.”

  “If I was interested in dating, which as you very well know, I’m not, I’d have to find a man first. There are not a lot of single men in Window Rock.” Strictly speaking that wasn’t true. But Arizona was no different from the rest of America. Here, as in New Hampshire, most men didn’t give a heavyset woman a second glance, let alone ask her out.

  “It’s time you put Cody Jones behind you,” Alma said. “You’ve given that,” she bit her words off. Diana knew that Alma had never figured out an epithet that was both strong enough to indicate her disgust for her former son-in-law and yet was not too vulgar to utter. “It’s been almost four years since the divorce. You have a new job — a new career — it’s time you got on with your life.”

  Danna peeked at her watch. She still had a few minutes. Should she tell her mother about Hunky Dude? Probably not. Hunky Dude had started showing up at the Bluebonnet in August. He had had his left arm in a brace for the first few weeks. He usually ate a solitary breakfast over a book while she and whoever else was sharing her mid-morning break drank coffee and chatted. She had pegged him as career military even though he always wore civilian clothes. There was just something about his erect posture and air of alert authority.

  Hunky Dude was taller than she was — which was nice in a man. His dark hair and blue eyes made an attractive combination in a tanned face. He wasn’t exactly handsome. His face was too angular and hard to be called handsome. But that big square chin and aquiline nose gave him a fierce attractiveness. Not that he had given the smallest indication that he had noticed her. Not that he had sought out her company. In any case, it was better not to throw out hope to Mom.

  “I’m not interested in being anyone’s wife ever again,” Diana said instead. “I’ve made a good life for myself. And I don’t have room in it to kowtow to any man. I work with a great bunch of women. I’ve made good friends. And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend Friday night with than Ricky. He’s only three, but he’s so smart. He’s teaching himself to read. I’m almost finished his costume. I’m going to make him try it on tonight and see if I can get it done before I leave.”

  “Did you figure out how to make the cape stand away from his shoulders?” Alma asked.

  “I used florist’s wire. It’s lightweight and can be shaped easily. I think it should look like it’s rippling in the wind.”

  “Clever. Tina’s lucky to have you around. But what if it snows?”

  “In Arizona? Not so much, Mom. He can put a sweater under his Batman suit if it’s chilly on Halloween. And we’re going to use face paint for the headpiece so Ricky will be able to see.”

  “You sound as excited as if he was your own nephew,” Alma accused. “Or your own son.”

  Diana laughed. “If I was a working mom like Tina, I’d be too busy to make a Halloween costume. I’d have gone to the store and paid ten bucks for a ready-made Batman costume. And Ricky would have been just as pleased if Tina had done that. But you know me — I love a project.”

  “I know. Tina is lucky to have you drop everything so she can go out.”

  “I’m the lucky one. She shares her kid with me. And soon I’m going to have an honorary niece to go with my honorary nephew. Tina went on maternity leave effective today. I think the baby will come in the next few days.”

  “Do you mind?” Alma said. Her voice was very quiet and sad.

  “I’ve gotten over myself, if that’s what you mean,” Diana said briskly. There was no point dwelling on the fact that she would never have a child of her own. Facts were facts. She was barren. It was just another reason she was not interested in men. Without the prospect of a baby of her own, no guy — not even Hunky Dude — was worth the risk.

  “I’m just considering myself fortunate that I’ve made some good friends who trust me with their kids. I’m invited for Halloween too. So I’ll get to see Ricky suited up as Batman.”

  “Call me tomorrow.” Alma said.

  “I will. Love you.”

  “Love you.” Alma hung up her phone.

  * * *

  As soon as he was back in Yellow River, Pierce reported to his assigned controller. Hulk Bascom might have made the original recommendation to include Maj. D’Angelo in the Fuck Alls, but Bascom was now living in the Pacific Northwest, and Pierce was in the Southwest. Even if they hadn’t been pals, Bascom would’ve made an inefficient point of contact. Pierce dialed the number he had been given. It rang twice. A voice freighted with authority and good humor answered.

  “Bear One,” it said.

  Pierce thought he recognized his controller’s voice. But he also knew how to be discreet. “Phoenix Three,” he replied. If Bear One was the guy he thought he was, just saying he was a phoenix was enough to identify him as Pierce D’Angelo. But not naming names was standard FA policy and just good sense — even on an encrypted line.

  “Report.” Bear One no longer sounded good-humored.

  Pierce kept it short and snappy. When he was done explaining all the reasons why Brodie Purcell was not Venom, Bear One spoke again. “Negative results are as useful as positive. Crossing guys off our list is valuable work.” He paused. “I don’t have another assignment for you today. How long are you available?”

  “Until my med leave is up. Two — three months. And I’d be happy to help out when I can.”

  “I’ll let you know.” Bear One disengaged.

  Since he had talked to Hulk, Pierce had googled the media reports of rapes in the Southwest. Venom had been operating for perhaps two years. His pattern was irregular. No wonder the cops thought they had twenty different rapists. Sometimes Venom would hit two women a couple of days apart — in two different states. And then he would go three weeks before popping up in yet another spot.

  This summer, he had gone from Salt Lake City to Boswell, Colorado, a town so small it was hard to find on a map. And then he turned up in Phoenix, before hopping across to Las Vegas. In between, Venom might’ve been the guy who beat and left a tourist for dead in Greer, Arizona. The reports didn’t say if she had been sexually assaulted. Just that she had been found in an apparently locked cabin.

  Since Venom used different methods to subdue the women, and they were never permitted to see their attacker, there was no ID kit. The bastard used condoms and flushed them. That was about the only constant. But it didn’t look as though that little fact had given the cops enough to figure out that they had a serial rapist on their hands.

  Pierce had met enough profilers to know that they expected perps to follow patterns. If rapists were disorganized, they stayed disorganized. If they were organized, in the beginning they might make beginner’s mistakes, but they inevitably learned and improved their techniques. Usually serial rapists would stay in areas where they felt comfortable and in control. Venom obviously felt comfy everywhere in the Southwest.

  Usually rapists could be counted on to look for victims who all had long blonde hair, or who were college students. But other than the fact that these women were home alone, Venom’s chosen victims were all completely different. About all that was similar was their sex. They were not females of a particular physical type or age. No wonder the cops hadn’t connected these cases.

  The FAs were probably correct to be looking for a snake shifter. That would account for the bastard entering places that were locked up tight as a drum. The suspect was obviously surveilling his victims. At least two of the women lived with male partners. One shared a home with her mother. Venom had picked a rare night when those women were sleeping alone in an empty house. Once might be a coincidence. Three times argued that the bastard began by stalking. It was time the FAs shut this guy down.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Before she left for Tina’s place, Diana did
her usual walkthrough of her apartment. She made sure that all the windows, as well as the sliding door, were securely latched. Even though Cody Jones was safely in prison for at least another couple of years, making sure her apartment was secure before she left was still a comforting routine.

  Before she had moved in, she had had building management install better locks on all the windows. And she had cut a piece of broomstick to put in the track of her slider herself. Everything was properly shut and bolted but she still tested each lock. Double-checking made her feel better.

  Small as it was, she loved her little apartment. When she paid off the last of her student loans, she was going to upgrade to a two-bedroom place. A spare room — a sewing room — would be wonderful. Someplace she could leave her projects out without making a lot of clutter. Keeping everything neat and squared away was another coping mechanism. Life with Cody had been violent and unpredictable. Even four years later, she still needed the internal peace that routines and organization gave her.

  Despite the roof overhanging her windows, the Arizona sun was often fierce in her west-facing apartment. She had made the heavy ocher colored curtains to go over the beige vertical blinds that had come with her apartment. The light that leaked through the blinds turned the curtains gold even when they were closed.

  She had chosen a saturated terracotta for the wall behind her sofa. It brightened the whole room and made the neutral buff color she had painted the rest of the apartment walls seem warm and rosy. Her tiny home was a cozy and cheerful haven.

  She had refinished the little coffee table herself. And recovered the sofa and armchair. Only her round table and four chairs were new. It was the first real grown-up home she had ever had. She didn’t count those making-do apartments and trailers Cody had dragged her through.

  Life with Cody had been sketchy at best. Even before he stopped working. Even before he was arrested. The police had not really believed that she didn’t know her husband was cooking meth. But she hadn’t known. Cody wasn’t a user. Well, not of drugs. He had used her plenty and used her up. But she had never suspected that instead of wasting her money at the bar, hustling and being hustled at pool, he had a day job making drugs.

  The best thing that ever happened to her, was the day the DEA busted Cody’s operation. They had hauled him off with his fellow criminals. Then they had shown up on her doorstep and taken her in for questioning. But that had been more embarrassing than anything else. She had become fairly used to going to work with a bruise or two visible on her cheek or arms. After the first time or two, her coworkers stopped asking questions. But the cops had pried. She had explained that Cody and she led largely separate lives. That she gave him money. That he terrified her. No, she hadn’t left him — he had threatened to kill her if she did. And, yes, she believed him.

  At the time, saying those things out loud had been soul-destroying and mortifying. In hindsight, it had been cathartic. Cody had expected to make bail. But Diana certainly hadn’t planned on mortgaging her future so he could skip town and leave her owing fifty thousand dollars.

  He and the others had been left twisting in the wind by whoever was bankrolling their operation. That suited her just fine. As soon as she realized that Cody would remain in jail until he came to trial, and that he was going to get a long sentence, she had hightailed it out of their squalid Colorado trailer park.

  She and Cody had begun dating in high school. He had been the quarterback of the Barsted Braves. She had been one of his many girlfriends. Looking back, she could see that gawky, big-boned Diana Lowery had been flattered by big, brawny Cody Jones. She had been captain of the women’s basketball team, but that had not translated into a lot of male interest. Guys didn’t actually want to date an athletic woman who towered over them.

  Even in those days, Cody had expected her to drop everything when he wanted to see her. Diana had been so infatuated that she had. She had never understood why Mom and Dad had disliked him. Sophie and Bobby had also thought she could do better. But she had been head over heels in love with her quarterback.

  Diana probably wouldn’t have married right out of high school, except that she got pregnant. In Barsted that still meant getting married. And getting married meant not going to nursing school as she had always planned to do. Instead she got on fulltime at the big box store she had worked at parttime since she was fourteen.

  Cody had trained to be a mechanic. After graduation, he was supposed to be apprenticing and bringing home a paycheck. But somehow she wound up supporting both of them. And then she lost the baby. The miscarriage was due to the STD that Cody had given her. His response to her grief had been to slap her for objecting to his infidelities. And to punish her for being rendered sterile — as if the disease he had given her was somehow her fault.

  By then they were moving around New England, and Cody had given up all pretense of loving her or of trying to find work. Not that he was willing to let her go. She had become his wife — his property. After four years they had wound up in Colorado, miles from her family, living paycheck to paycheck. Her paycheck. It was always a relief when Cody left the house. She never asked where he was going. She herself was home as little as possible. Anyway, she had had to work two jobs to pay the rent on their miserable trailer.

  She didn’t know exactly when Cody had started cooking meth. Probably from the minute they got to Colorado. The cops hadn’t fully grasped that her lack of curiosity was all that kept her teeth intact. She had agreed to having their trailer searched. The cops hadn’t found any drugs, but they had found a stash of cash at the back of a closet. They had confiscated it, and she had never seen it again.

  They told her she was lucky not to be brought up on drug charges. She had left Colorado on the next bus and gone home to lick her wounds. Mom and Dad had given her the money they had set aside for her to go to college. Even after four years they had been hanging on to the hope that she would one day be able to complete her education.

  Their savings hadn’t been enough to pay for everything, of course. But it had been enough for her to go to nursing school and become a nurse practitioner with only a modest amount of student debt. Diana knew she had been extremely fortunate to land a job at the clinic in Window Rock. She’d even had a signing bonus that went directly to paying off her debts. In another year or two she would be completely free and clear.

  The scars of her unfortunate marriage would be with her forever. But she had made a good life for herself in Arizona. She worked with a great bunch of women. She was a nurse with a nine-to-five job. She had her own place — her own home. She was in control of her own future.

  And if that future didn’t include a man, or a child, it was still a damn fine future. She had friends. And she had Ricky and in a few days, she’d have his little sister. She turned off the light and left her apartment, making sure both deadbolts were locked behind her. If the price of control was a few obsessions with security, it was a fair trade.

  * * *

  This was the best career he could’ve ever dreamed up. Imagine getting paid to do what you loved most in the whole fucking world. It was literally a fucking dream come true. Who would’ve thought there were so many disgruntled exes locked up in Florence? He never seemed to run out of customers. In fact, he could pick and fucking choose. He had already blown off some dumbfuck who wanted him to go after his mom. Arnold Hermann did not do diaper-wearing crones. He preferred his victims to be young enough to give some sport.

  Ever since he’d done a tour in Florence, he had been amusing himself parttime. It had been a real pleasure to be able to use the contacts he had made there to turn his fucking hobby into a paying career. It seemed all he had to do was login to his website once or twice a week, in order to find his next fucking assignment.

  His standard price was ten grand. Enough to be painful, and more than enough to handle all his expenses. Bopping all over the Southwest ate up a lot of gas. Switching vehicles used up even more. Even when you didn’t have to buy them.
But he was doing okay. His bank balance was growing, and his investments were booming. Still, he had so many customers he was thinking of raising his prices, again.

  * * *

  Pierce usually tried to fly at least once a day. But it was all too easy to recall the thunderstorm that had sent him crashing to the desert floor in Syria. He had fucking lost his nerve. What the fuck use was a yellow-bellied phoenix? His father and brothers had told him that his regeneration might have triggered the thunder and lightning, the violent burst of energy providing the final spark to ignite the fury of the clouds. So his injuries were his own damn fault.

  The tempestuous days of the Arizona rainy season were largely past. Pierce could expect the glorious blue of the skies to hold until next July. And yet, without a nudge, he often went days without taking wing. Fortunately, Bear One had sent him an assignment. A woman had been found in Tussock, New Mexico, population one hundred and twelve. One hundred and eleven now. If this was Venom’s work, he was escalating. Pierce was to do recon and report. Again, he had decided on lesser phoenix. Caution could be very like cowardice.

  Millie Block had been found in her locked trailer, her head wrapped in duct tape. The authorities were looking for someone with keys to her trailer and a history of violence against women. Millie had been the victim of spousal abuse until her husband had gotten life for felony assault and murder. Louie Block had robbed a liquor store, killing the clerk in the process. He had pled out and received a life sentence. Millie had been left in peace. Since the guy most likely to have killed Mrs. Block was her incarcerated husband, the cops were looking for a lover.

  Pierce had seen Mrs. Block’s picture. She was a middle-aged woman with iron gray hair and a seamed face. Her smile was lopsided and she had lost her front teeth. She was no one’s idea of a siren. But love and lust came in all packages. His mission today was to surveil the Block trailer and see if he could spot any sign of a shifter. The cops were naturally enough looking for human spoor. Pierce was looking for animal tracks.