The Alpha Men's Secret Club 4: Intrigue: A Shockingly Hot BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance Read Online Free Page A

expose them could be silenced. Permanently.
    She had to tread very carefully here.
    Rita was nothing if not bold. She hadn’t won all those awards by being a shrinking violet. So she set out towards the mansion. She was getting quite close now. Close enough to see the halo cast by the lights in the gardens. The music had died down. It was after all very early in the morning and most of the guests had probably gone home or into the woods to sleep their revelry off.
    It was then she stumbl ed onto a scene that would play vividly in her head.
    Over and over.
    It was one that would have far-reaching repercussions for Teddy Mitchell and Rust O’Brien.
     
     

7
     
    Lance and Geraldine hightailed it to the coroner’s as fast as they could.
    The coroner was a black man named Desmond Wells. He was tall and bald, and would have been handsome were it not for an extremely pockmarked complexion which he attributed to chicken pox as a child.
    “Lay it on us, Des,” Lance said as he waltzed into the pathology lab.
    “The autopsy shows that Teddy Mitchell was killed by massive chest wounds made by the claws of an animal. No fragment of any claw was left inside the chest cavity.”
    “So it’s not murder?”
    “Are there any wild animals running around in the woods behind Aaron Mitchell’s house?” the coroner said.
    “There are bound to be wild animals running around in most woodlands, I reckon,” Lance said. “Especially one as extensive as the one backing Aaron Mitchell’s grounds. I wouldn’t rule it out, no.”
    Animal attack. He had to mull this over. This was a new twist he hadn’t seen coming.
    “What sort of animal was it?” Geraldine asked.
    “Definitely something with long claws. Bigger than a dog. Difficult to judge by wound marks alone, but I would say – from their diameter – something akin to a wildcat.”
    “What about wolves?” Geraldine said. “I’ve heard reports of wolf howls recorded in that area.”
    “It’s possible. But I would say it’s definitely bigger than your average wolf.” The coroner smiled. “But there was something else.”
    “Your clue,” Lance said. “The one you were teasing over the phone.”
    “Yes. We found some hairs in Teddy Mitchell’s chest cavity. Hairs which did not belong to him. Hairs which were implanted by the claws.”
    “Fur?”
    “Not fur. Human hairs.”
    Geraldine frowned. “A human with claws?”
    “Possibly circumstantial, but in a case like this, we have to investigate everything.” Desmond held up a glass slide containing a specimen. “This is one of the hairs.”
    Lance was quite well-versed in the texture and structure of human hairs.
    “It’s thicker,” he observed. “And more wiry than a hair on a human hair. But it’s still human hair.”
    The hair in question – mounted on the slide – was dark. And short.
    “Exactly. What do you conclude?” Desmond said.
    Lance turned to Geraldine.
    “What do you conclude?” he asked his rookie.
    Geraldine hesitated. Lance knew she was afraid to venture a wrong answer. But she was the best and brightest of his rookies. She knew the answers.
    Geraldine replied, “It’s a pubic hair. It’s a human pubic hair.”

8
     
    When Kate made the call to the administration office on Monday morning, they were none too pleased.
    “Where are you exactly, Ms. Penney?” said Ms. Buckley in a sharp voice.
    Ms. Buckley was in charge of student administration and term credits, among other things. Kate read her as a quick-witted woman who was as impatient as she was razor-tongued. Kate had always been a little afraid of her.
    “I’m in New York,” Kate said in a small voice.
    “I know that. Are you with Rust O’Brien, Kate?”
    Kate looked around the empty Four Seasons suite. Rust had left. He had made good on his word and left her all alone in that hotel suite. For her own safety, he claimed.
    “No,” she said.
    “But you went there to be with him, and now you’re caught up in something