To Catch His Mate

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

There’s that smell again.

Feeling my c**k rise, I made sure my jacket covered the bulge at my crotch completely. Wouldn’t want to scare off—or encourage—the client. I spoke from experience.

As I prowled around the scene of the previous night’s robbery, I considered my prey. This particular thief was unlike any other I’d encountered in the past. I’d caught the same scent at each location, and it smelled like…belonging. I didn’t know how else to describe it. Odd as this was, it seemed to call to me, and I wanted to know why. I needed to tell Uncle Ben about this. Maybe he could help me figure out why this affected me so much.

I smiled to myself as I thought about my cantankerous guardian. Benjamin Allen Cotter—”Ben” to everyone who knew him—was the man who’d raised me and had taken me in many years ago after I’d wandered up to his campfire in the woods—in shifted form, no less. I’d been just a cub then, and, kudos to Uncle Ben, he’d taken it in stride when I’d changed from beast to human while I devoured the food he’d offered me.

I was huge—at least ten feet in length, not counting my tail—and quite broad when I let out the beast. Neither Ben nor I had been able to figure out over the years just exactly what I was, and we’d searched every source we could think of. I was simply the creature—body like a black panther, snow-white head like a Bengal tiger, with matching paws—that Uncle Ben had brought home to stay. Maybe my real parents had had an orgy or something. I was a weird mix of really bad-ass cats. Ben had adopted me, and I was christened Felix Cotter.

While examining the safe visually, I thought about my childhood. Growing up had been an adventure for Ben and me, especially as I adapted to more human ways, and learned to control my shifting, both partial and full. It didn’t depend on moon cycles or seasons that I could tell. Neither of us knew what my background had been, since I couldn’t remember much from before the time he’d found me. I would get pictures or images in dreams, sometimes. Maybe a smell that tried to trigger something, but never anything helpful.

So we started from scratch. I became less feral as I grew older. Uncle Ben homeschooled me until he felt it was safe for me to be out in public by myself. We would go into the woods near his house and explore my abilities. I went to high school and kept pretty much to myself, not making many friends. My sheer size as a human ensured that I was left alone, most of the time.

I needed to visit the old codger. I usually went home once a week, but this case had kept me too busy to do the long trip into the mountains for about a month. Maybe we’d go camping in the woods this weekend. I’d have to call Ben and see if he was up to it, with his rheumatoid arthritis and all.

As I continued to check the room for clues, I reflected as I always did, on my heightened olfactory abilities. It made me damn good at my job as an insurance investigator. All my senses were much keener than those of most people, but my nose was one of my greatest assets. It was something that I had honed to my advantage. I could literally sniff out the truth, or a lie. It didn’t hurt that I was also intimidating in person, at six-foot-seven inches in height. It was simply a fact of my life, and this spate of jewelry robberies from policyholders all along the East Coast was bringing every one of those abilities to bear.

Another thing that bugged me, was that ever since I’d taken this case, I’d been having wet dreams. I awoke every damn morning to the smell of stale c*m and my d**k stuck to my underwear. I had to catch this culprit, if for no other reason than to reduce my laundry bill and stop having sticky briefs. Or, f**k him senseless.

Tracking this guy—his scent screamed “male”—had meant traveling by plane all over the East Coast, and I loathed flying. Hell, most closed spaces gave me the creeps, but I was usually able to subdue the panic, as long as I didn’t have to stay there too long, or had access to fresh air and nature.

* * * *

I shook myself out of my reverie and got back to the matter at hand. I was on the eighteenth floor in a penthouse that reeked of money. I didn’t need my keen nose to figure that out. From the art on the walls to the antique vase on the corner table, everything in the rambling suite was expensive and seemed to revel in flaunting that fact.

A breeze moved gently through open doors leading to the balcony, and the view of the skyline at night was spectacular. My sharp eyesight picked out the dark shapes of trees in a park a mile away and it reminded me how long it had been since I’d been out in the woods. I definitely needed to call Uncle Ben before my inner beast got impatient with city living.

“Were these doors open all yesterday evening?” I asked, turning to a middle-aged woman nursing a snifter of brandy.

Standing there, weaving like a flag in a breeze, the victim—Mrs. Rutlidge—took a sip before she spoke. “I suppose so. I often leave them ajar in the summer.” She followed my gaze to the doors and then stared back at me.

“Mr. Cotter, you can’t seriously think anyone came in that way, do you?” she blurted out at full volume, making my ears ring.

“Call me Felix, please. I’m just looking at all the angles. Sometimes the impossible is quite plausible, I’ve found.” Plus, I’d already checked out the security cameras for the elevators and this floor, as well as the sign-in log at the front desk downstairs. Nothing was out of the ordinary. So, the only thing left was the most unlikely. He had to have come in from outside. How, though?

Mrs. Rutlidge grunted some vague obscenity into her drink, then stumbled to the relative security of a plush love seat, managing not to spill the liquid. I continued my search.

There were no signs of forced entry, just like the other heists. The safe hadn’t been forced open, which was where the theft had taken place. The culprit had to have known the combination beforehand. Nothing else of value had been lifted, only the jewelry in the safe, despite the other priceless items available. The thief had appeared and disappeared again leaving no evidence—aside from the missing jewelry and his scent—that he’d even been here.

I walked to the window again. His smell was very strong here, even after twenty-four hours. So, whether or not it was believable, this was how he’d gotten in and out. It was the same at all the other locations that had outside access. Fascinating.

I turned back to Mrs. Rutlidge, whose glass was now empty. “Thanks for your time, ma’am. The insurance company will be in touch with you regarding the paperwork and next steps.” I didn’t wait for her to walk me to the door.