Ripper

Chapter One





“I’m not really an expert at missing persons, Mrs. Taylor,” I said to the small woman sitting across from me even as I wondered what she changed into when the moon was full. I was betting it was something sweet and fluffy. She had that look about her.

With shifters, it’s always the eyes that give them away, but I couldn’t really explain it to you. You have to learn to read the signs. There’s something about the way they move and the depth of color in a shapeshifter’s eyes that’s different than a regular human being. If you watch a shifter long enough, their body movement will also give them away. They move with more fluidity than we do. But again, it’s something you have to be trained to see.

“I was told you were a private investigator.” Mrs. Taylor’s chin came up and I would have bet money that she spent some of her time as a deer. There was a grace about the way she held herself.

I was out of practice, but my every instinct screamed prey animal. Sometimes at night I have strange dreams which, given my unique background, shouldn’t be surprising. One of those dreams has to do with the police training exercises they put newbies through. They have you walk through a fake city street and little cutouts of people pop up and you have a split second to decide if you shoot or not. You want to shoot the bad guy, but not the mom carrying the baby. If Mrs. Taylor popped up, I would make the instant decision to not shoot. My father held a different worldview. He would shoot them all on the off chance the baby had a gun. You could never, never be too careful in my father’s world. This was precisely why I had gotten out.

“I’m a licensed private investigator, but I mostly help insurance companies investigate accidents.” I answered her, but most of my brain was working on how I would get her out of my office. I had some serious solitaire to play. Not to mention the fact that it was already one thirty and I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. I take lunch seriously. My brothers often joke that I eat like a hobbit. I had missed elevensies due to a line at the Hurst Police Department, and I wasn’t about to miss lunch.

Big brown eyes went all watery on me and I noticed that she had her purse in a death grip. It was a sure sign she was ready to explode.

“Maybe I could refer you to someone else.” I searched my brain for a name to give her. I didn’t get a whole lot of actual, in-person clients, so I was a little at a loss as to how to handle this one. My job mostly consisted of retrieving police accident reports for liability claims adjusters. I went out and took pictures of intersections and determined light sequences. Sometimes I interviewed witnesses when they were hard to find or refused to talk on the phone. I followed the “potentially less injured than they say they are” and took pictures of them doing various activities they shouldn’t be able to do. My favorite? The dude who was suing for two million due to complete loss of leg function dancing with strippers. I have it framed. I took on the occasional divorce case, but I tended to side with the women, so I preferred female clients. It worked out because most men in a divorce case didn’t go looking for a female PI.

“No,” Helen Taylor said as the tears started to fall. “It has to be you.”

I glanced around for anything I could use as tissues. I suppose most seasoned PIs keep a box on their desk, but I wasn’t that seasoned. I was twenty-six and had only been on the job for six months. Atwood Investigations was a one-woman operation. I didn’t even have a secretary. It was all Kelsey Atwood, all the time. I had lucked into the contract with Driver’s Insurance and I was riding that sweet wave of lower middle income because I didn’t have the energy to be ambitious. My mom was high school friends with the local district manager, and by chance the company’s former PI on retainer had recently retired. Unless you wanted someone to walk into a suburban police department and request a report, I failed to see how I was the only one to do the job. I was about to go to the bathroom for a roll of toilet paper when the blonde woman pulled out her own little pack of tissues and daintily blew her nose.

I was sympathetic, but resolute. I didn’t want to get involved in something messy. This client deserved better than I would be able to give her. She needed to be someplace that could really liaise with the police. I told myself a thousand different reasons why I wouldn’t help this woman and almost all of them were noble. Of course, only one of them was true and it wasn’t self-sacrificing.

I wouldn’t help her because she was a shifter and I wasn’t going back to that world.

“Please,” she said, her feminine voice tremulous. “She has been gone for five days. She’s never been out of touch for that long. We talk twice a day, Joanne and I. I work the nightshift as a janitor at a school. She calls every night to make sure I get home after my shift. Something bad has happened to her.”