Kissing the Werewolf - An Izzy Cooper Novel (11 page)

After stuffing another handful of caramel popcorn into my mouth, I raised the binoculars and focused on Ayden’s front door.

Stakeouts were completely new to me, if I didn’t count my stalking Elias days.

I was quickly finding that despite what I’d seen with TV cops, stakeouts were extremely boring. I’d been watching Ayden’s house all afternoon, and the most exciting thing that happened was when the paperboy wiped out on the curb two houses down.

Although it might mean blowing my surveillance, I got out and helped the boy pick up the newspapers that had gone flying all over the street. In exchange for my help, I wanted some information.

“Hey … have you seen the guy who lives in that house?” I asked, pointing to Ayden’s little white house.

The boy’s longish red hair flipped in front of his face when he shook his head. “I haven’t seen Mister Fontaine since a black car picked him up a couple days ago.”

This was a strange but interesting development.

“About what time was that?”

“I have to get the paper out in the evening. I’m usually on this street in the afternoon, but I had a doctor appointment that day and was late getting the paper out,” he explained before jumping on his bright green bicycle.

So it sounded as if it would have been shortly after Ayden left the Sandbar two nights ago.

The boy’s description of the car was too vague. I needed more. “What kind of car was it?”

“I don’t know. It was big, black, and shiny. The guy who got out and opened the door for him was wearing a black suit, like Men in Black. That’s all I know,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Okay … thanks,” I told him, waving as he rode away.

Now Ayden had disappeared. It made sense that he’d left the night we did our ghost hunt, as no one had seen or heard from him since then.

When he hadn’t shown up for work the next morning, Tim and I started calling his mobile, but he wasn’t answering. We’d even contacted the Portland field office. Not that it had done much good. They hadn’t heard from him either. At least that’s what they claimed, though with this new information, I wasn’t so sure. It sounded very FBI to me.

But why would he disappear like that, and why would the FBI lie to their own agents about it?

Now I had a missing boss, on top of a missing sister. With Ayden gone, Tim had taken charge and was now heading another search for Annabelle. Today they were searching on the north side of the island.

When I brought up the idea of searching the Marsh estate, I’d discovered that we would need a search warrant. Strangely enough, the county refused to allow the search without one.

Not only that, but getting a warrant wasn’t going to be easy. We’d already filed for a one from the local court and been denied. Now we were going to have to wait until we were issued a federal warrant. That could take a day or two, probably longer with Ayden missing.

But why was the local government fighting us on this?

That was the big question.

The obvious answer was that they were hiding something, but what?

I sensed that Annabelle was still okay, but she was weakening. Our connection seemed to be fading.

When I’d tried to join the search, Tim refused to let me. It would seem he thought my efforts would be put to better use looking for Ayden.

After searching all the places I knew the boss man frequented, including the Bayside Grill, and Mom’s Pins and Balls Bowling Alley, I came to the conclusion the only thing left to do was watch his house in case he returned.

That hadn’t been working out too well.

I’d just settled back in my car when my phone rang. I snatched it from the passenger seat where I’d tossed it.

I found that during a stakeout, my phone was much easier to get to if I kept it on the seat, as opposed to the back pocket of my jeans.

These days, I tended to be a little more careful about answering my phone and texts.

There was a bit of hope that it was Ayden calling, or maybe the Portland field office, but my hopes were quickly dashed when I saw it was Granny Stella. Not that I didn’t want to hear from my grandmother, but finding Ayden about right now could make life a whole lot easier.

“Hi Granny.”

“Any news on your sister yet?” she asked, the stress in her voice evident.

Poor Granny had been worried sick. Since Mom’s accident, she’d been extra protective over the rest of her family.

“Sorry … not yet, but we are still searching. Tim has a search party out near North
Beach.”

“There’s something else,” Granny Stella cut in before I could go into detail about the North Beach search.

“What is it?” I asked, not liking the distress I sensed.

“I tried a little locator spell last night, and got nothing.”

“Well sometimes those spells work … sometimes they don’t. You know that,” I reminded her.

“No matter. I thought the same thing at first, but I didn’t even get a spark. I still wasn’t totally convinced until this morning. That’s when I did a test drive. My roses haven’t been doing too well … so I decided to give them a dose of magic, and do you know what happened?”

“Hmm … nothing?” I asked, a little afraid she’d say yes. Turns out it was worse than I feared.

“Not only did they not perk up like they usually do when I give them a push … they were completely dead within seconds. Something bad is happening,” she added with a heavy sigh.

I was at a complete loss for words. A spell not working was one thing, but a spell having the opposite effect was another story entirely.

When I failed to respond, on account of me not knowing what to say, Granny asked, “Are you sure everything is okay?”

“Not really Granny. I’ll look into it, but I have no idea why your spells wouldn’t be working.”

What had Julius said about someone drawing away power?

Could it be that someone was draining the power from, not just me, but also other people on the island?

Was it possible for the island to suck up a witch’s power?

But that didn’t make sense. If the island were drawing on the power of others, the roses would have been thriving and intervention wouldn’t have been needed.

Something or someone was sucking up everyone’s power, including the island’s.

“I’ll look into it Granny.”

“Thank you dear. You make sure you call me if you hear anything about Annabelle.”

“I will,” I promised.

From the moment Dale’s body was discovered, everything had gone to crap, and there sure weren’t any signs of things getting better. In fact, it was exactly the opposite. Everything seemed to be falling into total chaos.

What was really going on?

When one is wasting their time, which is exactly what I felt I was doing, they move on to something else. In this case, that something else involved contacting the second in command, Tim.

His phone rang several times before he finally answered. “What’s up?”

I quickly relayed what I’d learned about Ayden before asking how the search was going.

“We haven’t found anything at all,” he informed me.

“Maybe it’s time to call in reinforcements?”

“And what would we tell our reinforcements? Tim asked. “That we possibly have a pack war on our hands, or that our serial killer is an ancient mummy, and to top it off … our boss has been abducted by the Men in Black?”

“Okay okay! I get it. We are on our own. I just think I’m wasting my time watching the boss man’s house. If he is okay … chances are he’s going to contact one of us before he goes home … and if he was abducted, the perps probably aren’t coming back here.”

As I was rambling about the merits of abandoning my post, a Mystique County Sheriff’s car pulled up behind me.

“I think Jeb’s here. He probably wants to know how the search is going.”

“Don’t tell him anything about Ayden yet,” Tim advised. “There is one thing I haven’t tried. I’m only supposed to do it in an emergency, but I think this qualifies.”

“What’s that?” I asked, pretending not to see Jeb standing next to my door and motioning for me to roll down the window by twirling his finger.

Funny that I’d never notice how nerdy our sheriff was before.

“Never mind. I’ll let you know if I find anything,” he said before ending the call abruptly.

Tim and Ayden sure did have a bad habit of keeping secrets. If I were going to be working with them, this was definitely something we needed to talk about.

Turning to look at Jeb, I pretended to be startled, like I’d just noticed him. As soon as I rolled down the window, he leaned over and rested his arm on the car door. “What are you doing here?”

“Well … I was just looking for my boss.” I was proud of myself. I’d just given him an explanation that wasn’t really a lie, though I wasn’t so sure that learning ways to skirt around the truth would be a virtue.

“Any word on Annabelle?” he asked.

“No not yet,” I shook my head. “Any word on why they won’t let us search the Marsh estate?”

It was Jeb’s turn to shake his head. “Strangest damn thing I ever heard of. Spent half the morning trying to sweet talk Luis into convincing the county to allow the search. He won’t have anything to do with it.”

“Maybe I should pay him a visit and try some convincing?”

“You could give it a try.” Jeb shrugged. “Just be nice,” he warned in his extra stern voice.

Jeb still hadn’t forgotten the time I’d thumped Brenna Hardin’s forehead a good one in my effort to convince the little witchy poo to stop putting mice in my locker. For the most part, it had worked, but my success had come at a cost, namely being sent to the principle’s office. I also had to face Jeb and my granny.

The good part was that I’d gone through the rest of high school without Brenna messing with my locker.

“I’ll be nice,” I promised.

The truth was, this wasn’t the first time I’d thought about visiting the county commissioner, but using my charms to convince Luis Sawyer wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind. I thought maybe flashing my badge and pulling my pistol would give me better results.

Tim talked me out of it, convincing me that it would be a lot safer if I watched Ayden’s house. I half thought he was just giving me something to do so I’d stay out of trouble.

Tim was about to find out that trouble was my middle name.

* * *

With the city and county building only being a block from the sheriff’s office, which was conveniently located in the court house, it wouldn’t take Jeb that long to get there, if someone did happen to call 911 for me pistol whipping that weasel, Luis.

I figured thirty seconds tops before I heard the sirens, and two or three minutes before the building was surrounded.

As I pulled into the parking lot from West Avenue, I ran through the scenario in my head.

I would ask to see Commissioner Sawyer, the secretary would refuse, and I’d pull my gun on her. About then, she’d usher me into Sawyer’s office. Once I was safely in the commissioner’s office, I’d very calmly suggest that he give me written permission to search the Marsh estate.

Likely he’d refuse, and I’d have to threaten him, but by then the building would probably be surrounded, and Jeb would be yelling at me through that horn he liked to use during a hostage situation.

Not that there had actually ever been a hostage situation in Storm Cove, but he and the other members of the Sheriff’s Department trained with it all the time.

It was finally the thought of spending the night … or possibly the next twenty-five years of my life behind bars that convinced me to revise my plan.

Before climbing the concrete steps to the old brick building, I put on my nice girl face. The county offices were located on the first floor, which was a good thing because I didn’t feel like taking the stairs. Climbing stairs would take too much energy and I would need to reserve all the energy I could, if I were going to be nice to Commissioner Weasel.

Betty George had worked as a receptionist for Mystique County nearly all her adult life, and she was at least Granny Stella’s age. She was one of those old ladies who had to wear a sweater, no matter what the temperature was. Although I was fairly sure she was completely gray by now, she kept her short curly hair dyed blond. Her milky blue eyes had always given me the creeps, but that could be because they reminded me of zombie eyes.

I didn’t know Betty well, as I’d never had much reason to visit the city and county building, but from what I did know of her, she seemed to be a nice lady, if you could overlook the eyes.

“Hello Betty,” I said, giving her a bright smile.

“Oh hello,” she smiled. “It’s Isabelle Cooper, right?”