“They do, but believe it or not, us fishy types can still handle some of the bigger land dwellers. A gun typically evens the odds against even the biggest animal.”
Sometimes even making it unfair, but she supposed that was as good a reason as any.
“As long as you meet it while you’re armed, and it doesn’t get away from your shark if you faced it in water first.”
He didn’t need to shift to protect her. Humans protected each other all the time from various threats with the weapons they had, and they were even capable of besting shifters at the best of times when technology was available to them.
Which was why most shifters wanted to keep the humans out of their affairs.
All the old stories—Dracula, The Wolf Man, Swamp Creature, stories of shifters being bested by the humans—were warnings.
Delilah glanced back down at her screen, pulling up a photo of what was left of Agent Carol Stewart.
Sometimes, the humans might have a good reason to be worried about the things that went bump in the night.
“Let me ask you something now.” Agent Reyes hadn’t moved from his spot next to the door, but it felt more and more like a thousand different things were happening at the same time around them.
“All right.” Delilah pressed her lips together.
“When the honey badgers land, are they going to fight this creature in their badger forms, or are they more likely to draw their guns and take out anyone who attacks?”
There was the answer she wanted to give and the one she knew was most likely to happen. “If they’re in their human forms when they find it, they’ll draw their weapons and fire. I would.”
Agent Reyes nodded as though it proved a point. Maybe it did. “It’s the same for me.”
“But the badgers can hunt. They’ll change into their animals and roam inconspicuously to look for and sniff out this bunyip if it is what’s stalking us now.”
At that, Reyes shrugged. “I won’t be jumping into the water to fight this thing unless I have to. The others can take care of that. It doesn’t matter, because I’m not here to track and hunt the thing. My responsibility is you.”
Delilah stilled. She didn’t want to be his responsibility.
But she wouldn’t mind being his pleasure.
That was cheesy. God, she was so glad she hadn’t said that out loud.
What the hell was wrong with her?
“You all right?”
Delilah nodded, clearing her throat and getting back into her notes.
“Yeah, fine. I’m just wondering, how would a whale shark be used in combat against other shifters in the water? I always thought they were kind of...big and slow.”
A quick search and the words docile and filter feeder didn’t give her the impression of a bloodthirsty or dangerous protector.
He grinned at her, his teeth somehow looking a little sharper than before. “Not unless you’re half a great white.”
“What?”
“Yup. Mom was a great white, and dad was a whale shark. They fell in love, and then I came into the world. Now we’re here.”
“I know how reproduction works.”
“Uh-huh.”
She willed the heat in her cheeks to go away. To settle down to something that didn’t make her body feel like it was on fire.
Why did it feel as though he’d set up a trap and she’d walked right into it?
She should not be talking about or thinking about reproduction when he was around.
Then he had to ruin it with an attempt at a joke. “You should see me when I’m eating. It’s great. At least in the water. I just open my mouth and suck in all the little, unsuspecting fishies before chomping down with my much larger teeth.”
Delilah blinked at him. She wasn’t going to laugh. Her mouth wasn’t quirking because she wanted to smile. It was only due to an itch that she felt this way at all.
“You’re an idiot.”
Aiden brought his hands to his heart, as though she’d wounded him. “That hurts me, deep inside, it really does.”
“I’ll give you something to hurt about,” she muttered, but all in all, she was in a good mood.
Back to work. She couldn’t be flirting when there was so much to do.
Focusing on the profiles of the agents helped clear her head somewhat, and soon she managed to find something.
“This agent right here, Gary Kirk.”
Agent Reyes approached her immediately to have a look. “What about him?”
“His shifted form is a crocodile, right?”
She pushed the tablet a little closer, allowing him to view the file.
Mr. Kirk was one of the few agents in the hall when she first debriefed Jack. Kirk kept mainly to security work, as opposed to field agent tasks to go out and hunt down the bad guys.
But the note in his file, of an early career reprimand regarding his personal hygiene, was what triggered her suspicions. The bunyip had a strong smell, and maybe Kirk hadn’t learned how to mask it early on. “It doesn’t necessarily mean guilt, but I think we should look into it, right?”
He smiled at her, and Delilah’s stomach became liquid. “Good catch. Great catch, actually.”
Then he said the words that went to every woman’s heart. “One hundred percent, you’ve found something. Let’s get Jack on this right now.”
Again with that strange feeling, as though his praise meant more than it actually did to her when it was just...praise.
Except, this was definitely getting to her head.
“Right, well, it comes with the job to be observant.”
“No kidding, that was amazing.” Reyes already had his phone pulled out and pressed to his ear as he called their boss.
The first order of business, seeing if anyone could vouch for Gary Kirk’s whereabouts for the night before.
8
With Jack’s authority, Delilah got her hands on the more in-depth file of Agent Kirk. Turned out, Kirk was a bit of a loner. He’d wanted to be a field agent but hadn’t quite managed to pass all the extra training to take that step. He was kept as a low-level agent, carrying a badge and a gun, while tasked with the lighter security work. This could bother a man who had planned and prepared his whole life to be a field agent.
Then there was the smell.
A shifter in their full form always smelled different than when they were presenting as a human, but other shifters could identify specific odors. If it was bad enough that he’d gotten dressed-down for it, that would mean it was a lot worse when in the full shifter form.
None of this was proof of misbehavior, let alone of being a murderer. The guy could have just had poor hygiene.
But that didn’t stop her from ticking boxes off inside her head.
“It makes sense for him to make the most of his kills in the water,” Delilah said. “Any land-dwelling shifter might catch the scent before the attack, but the water would mask a creature that was lurking below.”
One big setback in the investigation was the lack of photo proof of the agents in their animal shapes. The photo Gary did have on file for his animal shape looked too well lit and positioned. A quick image search proved that it was a stock photo from the Internet.
She was shocked it had made it through.