Page 9 of Subduing the Shark

"I tracked scent trails in the Mojave for the better part of a decade. I followed your smell through a parking lot and into a van months ago. I know what your fear smells like better than almost anyone alive, because I spent three days breathing it while I helped process the crime scene. So, when I tell you that what I'm smelling on you right now is worse than what I smelled in that van, I need you to hear that."

Jack looked up. Harold's brown eyes were steady, warm, impossible to dismiss. He wasn't being cruel. He wasn't being clinical. He was being honest, and the honesty of it was worse than cruelty because Jack couldn't deflect it.

"Go hump a fire hydrant," Jack said.

Harold's mouth twitched. "That's dogs. Real dogs. One-forms. Shifters don't do that."

"Then go chase your tail, sniff someone's butt, or whatever hounds do when they're being annoying. I don't need you cataloging what I smell like and drawing conclusions about my life."

"Fair enough." Harold pushed off the table and straightened up. He didn't leave, but he didn't push further. "If you change your mind about wanting to talk, I'm here every night. Same spot."

Jack watched him walk back to his post near the hallway. The hound moved through the crowd without touching anyone, which Jack noticed because he couldn't manage it himself. People bumped him constantly. Harold seemed to flow between them like water around rocks. He was broader than Jack had thought before. Not just bigger, which Jack had noted the first day in the clinical way you note the size of any potential threat. Broader in a way that had nothing to do with threat. The shoulders filling out the t-shirt, the way his weight settled into his hips when he took his position against the wall. Jack's gaze caught on Harold's hands, the thick fingers, the relaxed grip of someone who could restrain and choose not to.

He looked away. He didn't know what that observation was for or where to put it. He went back to the tables.

He finished the table and headed to the next one. The bruise on his ribs pulsed with every reach of his right arm. Harold hadn't been wrong about the flinch. He hadn't been wrong about any of it.

At midnight, Jack changed out of the shorts and headed for the elevator. Harold was at his post, not watching him, or at least not obviously. Jack hit the button and waited. The doors opened.

He stepped in, turned around, and found Harold looking directly at him across the length of the club. Steady. Patient. That same warm pressure that felt like being leaned on.

The doors closed. Jack rode up alone, walked past Bethany's empty desk, and headed into the night.

His fear scent must have been trailing behind him like a wake in the water, because he was terrified. Not of Harold. Not of the club. Of the walk home and the door that didn't lock and the challenge that was waiting on the other side of it.

Harold could smell all of that. Harold knew. He might not know the specifics, but he knew enough to have the pieces.

Jack walked faster.

Chapter Six

Jack had been working at KK for ten days. The routine was set and his body had adjusted to the hours, if not to the shorts. He was halfway through his shift, wiping down tables in the back section while the club pulsed around him, when a bear shifter twice his size decided Jack's ass was an invitation.

The hand didn't grab. It stroked. Slow, deliberate, from the small of Jack's back down to the waistband of his shorts and under. Jack's whole body locked. The bear leaned in close enough that Jack could smell whiskey, sweat, mingled with the heavy musk of a predator who thought he was being charming.

"You've got a nice shape for a fish," the bear said.

Jack pulled away. The bear followed. His hand closed on Jack's hip, fingers digging in, and Jack shoved him. Hard. Harder than he meant to. The bear stumbled back into a table and the drinks on it went sideways, glasses shattering on the concrete floor.

The noise brought Harold across the room in seconds. He put himself between Jack and the bear, badge visible, stance wide. "Walk away. Now."

The bear stared at Harold, glanced at Jack, and decided it wasn't worth the trouble. He raised his hands and backed off toward his friends, muttering about sharks who couldn't take a compliment.

Harold turned to Jack. "Come with me."

Jack shook his head. He needed to clean up the glass. He needed to get back to work. He needed to not be standing in themiddle of the club with his heart hammering and the ghost of the bear's fingers still crawling under his waistband. "I'm fine."

"You're shaking."

"I said I'm fine," he snapped. Jack crouched down and started picking up glass. His hands were trembling. He hated that Harold could see it.

Harold crouched beside him. "Leave the glass. I need you to come talk to me for a minute."

"I don't want to talk to you."

"That's fine. You can listen. But I'm not leaving you on the floor picking up broken glass while you're this rattled."

Jack looked up at him. Harold's face was calm. Patient. Infuriatingly patient, like he had all the time in the world and was perfectly content to crouch on a dirty club floor until Jack decided to cooperate. Jack thought about the pool, about sinking to the bottom where no one could reach him. He couldn't get to the pool right in that instant. Harold was the closest thing to stillness this room had to offer.