Callan: Outback Shifters #2 Read online

  Callan

  Outback Shifters #2

  Zoe Chant

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  A note from Zoe Chant

  More Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant

  Chapter 1

  “What the hell?”

  Ella Woodson stared out of the windscreen of her car as she pulled into the university carpark, swallowing heavily, her fingers tightening around the steering wheel.

  She couldn’t help it – cops always made her nervous. And right now, she could count no fewer than three patrol cars parked outside her lab building, red and blue lights flashing, while an officer unrolled a line of yellow tape across the front steps leading to the doorway. There was a growing crowd of students hanging around too, jostling each other and trying to take a gawk at whatever was going on.

  “What the hell?” Ella said again as she messily parked the car, grabbing her bag from the passenger’s seat and shoving the car door open, sudden nervousness making her stomach churn. Just why the hell was anyone, cop or not, taping up the doorway to her lab?

  Okay, so it wasn’t like it was just hers – she shared it with four other biochem PhD students – but that didn’t change the fact that all her notes, her computer, and her extremely delicate cell cultures were in there!

  Taking a deep breath as she marched across the carpark toward the cop cars, Ella tried to remind herself that she had no reason to be nervous of the police anymore. She hadn’t been in trouble with them since she’d been a teenaged runaway, and the last time she’d pulled that particular stunt had been more than ten years ago now.

  Since then, Ella liked to think she’d grown up a little: she’d stopped giving her Aunty Jude heart attacks by sneaking out of her bedroom window at night, and stopped cutting class to go hang out at the shops. She’d started studying harder at school – and actually graduated, with top marks in maths and science. She’d actually gone to university. And now, she was actually doing the PhD in biochemistry she’d barely even dared to apply for.

  Still, Ella thought, feeling her palms beginning to sweat, there were times when she felt like anyone looking at her could see all the way back into her rambunctious past, and know she didn’t really belong here.

  It was a feeling she’d tried hard to shake – but it was still a work in progress.

  Ella licked her lips, tension bunching her shoulder muscles. She didn’t know when she’d started doing it, but she suddenly realized that her right hand was against her chest, her fingers curled around the onyx pendant of the necklace she wore.

  Quickly, she snatched her hand away from it, anger joining unease in the pit of her stomach.

  I don’t need to do that to comfort myself, she thought, tightening her jaw. Though, the thought came a moment later, if that were really true, I wouldn’t even wear the stupid thing anymore.

  She shook her head slightly, forcing her mind off her necklace, and the person who’d given it to her. She didn’t need to be dwelling on her tragic backstory right now – the crappy absentee father who’d sent her all the way to Australia so she wouldn’t get under his feet, the mother who’d died of cancer only a year after Ella had been born, the adolescence spent feeling abandoned and alone – when she was trying to keep a level head in front of the cops.

  “Excuse me,” she said, shouldering her way through the crowd of students, until finally she found herself at the doorway of her lab building, her path blocked by a burly police officer, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Sorry, but you can’t go in right now,” he said as she approached, holding up a hand. “Class is canceled for today.”

  “I work here,” Ella blurted out, trying to crane her neck to see past him into the doorway. “Can’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  She swallowed as the cop looked her over, his eyebrow raised skeptically. It didn’t do anything to help Ella’s already fraying nerves.

  “I work here, and I’m a student here,” Ella said quickly, hoping that that would explain her baggy hoodie, hastily pulled back hair, old jeans and battered sneakers.

  She held his gaze, lifting her chin a little, hoping she looked confident and in control despite her raggedy clothes and the way her heart was hammering in her chest.

  It’s PhD student chic! Everyone’s wearing it, especially at this time of year when it’s coming to crunch time with our theses! I’m not teaching today, so no one cares how I look!

  “You work in this building?” the officer asked, clearly unconvinced.

  Ella nodded, belatedly remembering to pull her staff ID out of her bag, holding it up for his inspection. Her hand shook a little, and she hoped he didn’t notice.

  “That’s me,” she said, as he narrowed his eyes at her photo. Now that the surprise of seeing the cops was beginning to wear off, cold fear clutched at her gut. Had something happened to one of her colleagues or students? Ella swallowed as panic fluttered in her throat. “Please – can you just let me know if – if – something happened? Is anyone hurt?”

  The cop hesitated a moment longer, before shaking his head. “No. No one’s hurt. But is this the first time you’ve been here today?”

  Ella bit her lip as relief flooded her. None of her students or friends were hurt. That was her first concern.

  But now that I know that… what actually is going on here?

  Ella blinked, remembering suddenly that the officer had asked her a question.

  “No – I mean, yes, this is the first time I’ve been here today. I – I just got here. I worked late last night, so I’m starting late today. That’s why I’m only just arriving,” she blurted out without pausing for breath, realizing she was doing an absolutely spectacular job of making herself look guilty as hell.

  Evidently, the officer hadn’t missed it either. She could see the glimmer of suspicion in his eyes.

  Or, she thought, maybe it’s just your paranoid imagination.

  She tried to look him in the eye and calm her pounding heart.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, hoping honesty would be the best policy. “It’s just that all my work is in there, so I’m kind of anxious about – all this. Now that I know no one’s hurt, I guess I just want to know if my research is okay – there’s a lot of years of work in there.”

  She smiled, resisting the urge to gnaw on her lower lip. Her stomach still felt queasy.

  The cop’s expression didn’t change at first, but then he seemed to relent, shaking his head.

  “Well, I don’t know if I have good news for you, then,” he finally said. “The lab’s been trashed.”

  Ella blinked, staring, certain she couldn’t have heard him correctly. “W-what?”

  “Not completely,” he said. “Just a bit of it. There’s another officer in there now with the staff member who arrived and found it like this. They’re going over the damage together.”

  It seemed to Ella as if the officer’s words were drifting to her through a haze of smoke. Her blood felt icy cold in her veins, her brain utterly frozen.

  “Trashed…?” she eventually managed to get out, her voice barely above a whisper.

  Oh God. My work. Everyone else’s work –

  “Like I
said, not totally.” The police officer was starting to sound a little more sympathetic – though that did absolutely nothing to allay the horror that was churning in Ella’s stomach. “There’s still plenty that’s –”

  Ella didn’t hear a single word he said after that, as the lab building door opened, two people walking through it. Ella swallowed when she saw Priyanka, one of the PhD students she shared the lab with, her face grim as she spoke quietly to the police officer by her side.

  “Priyanka?” Ella called out, as, without thinking, she rushed forward, only to feel the police officer’s strong hand on her shoulder. Right now, however, she just didn’t care about that.

  “Pri, what’s happened in there?” she said, as Priyanka looked up, her eyes widening as she looked at Ella.

  It wasn’t an expression that filled Ella with confidence.

  Priyanka glanced at the police officer by her side, before saying something Ella couldn’t make out. The police officer nodded, before walking over.

  “She can come in,” the officer said, her voice low. “Miss Dutt says she’s the one who’ll be able to help us identify the damage.”

  Ella stared at her. She knew her mouth was open, but no words were coming out.

  No. No. That can’t mean what I think it means.

  “Miss… Woodson, is it?” the officer asked, and Ella could barely bring herself to nod. “If you’ll come with me, please.”

  Ella felt as if she was floating away. She knew she was moving, but she could barely feel the concrete of the steps beneath her feet.

  “Ella, wait.”

  Priyanka’s voice and the sudden warmth of her hand against her shoulder jerked Ella at least somewhat out of her reverie. She turned, blinking, and found Priyanka’s eyes on her, wide and filled with sympathy.

  “You might – just want a second to prepare. It’s… not good. I’m really sorry, Ella.”

  Ella could only find it within herself to nod, before the police officer guiding her into the lab tugged on her arm a little.

  “Miss? I get that you might need a moment, but the sooner we can get this over with, the better.”

  Again, Ella nodded, before turning away from Priyanka and going into the lab.

  She could tell even before she rounded the corner that not good was really the mildest way Priyanka could have described the situation. Papers were strewn through the corridor, and Ella could see a smashed-up computer monitor lying on the floor by a doorway. She swallowed heavily.

  Okay. Okay. That’s shitty, but not the end of the world. I have everything backed up in at least seven different places – I learned that lesson the hard way after losing one of my undergrad essays the night before it was due. As long as my cell cultures are okay, then everything else –

  “Watch out – the floor’s wet in here,” the police officer said as she pushed open the door, and Ella came face to face with the wreck of her lab.

  She closed her eyes, barely daring to breathe.

  This is all a bad dream. Please tell me this is all a bad dream. Oh shit. Oh fuck.

  Ella was tempted to pinch herself. Wouldn’t that be the best way to wake up from a nightmare?

  She dug her thumbnail deep into the flesh of her forearm.

  Ow. Shit.

  After pinching herself that hard, Ella knew that she’d either wake up in her bed, sweating through her sheets at the horrible dream she’d just had… or she’d open her eyes again and see the cell cultures she’d spent years working on smashed up all over the floor.

  Taking a deep breath, Ella opened her eyes.

  Nope. Not a dream after all. A reality. A horrible, horrible reality.

  She let her eyes wander over the smashed-up petri dishes that covered the floor. Petri dishes that had, until now, been the key to all her years of research.

  Ella took a deep breath, hearing it shudder in her lungs. She must have sounded like she was about to start crying – hell, maybe she was – because she felt the police officer’s hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Was this your work?”

  Ella nodded. She wasn’t sure she trusted herself to speak right now.

  “Miss Dutt – Priyanka, was it? – told me that everything that had been destroyed was your work.”

  Blinking, Ella turned to her. “Only – only my work?”

  The officer nodded. “Nothing else was touched, according to Miss Dutt. That’s why I wanted to get you in here to talk to you about it. What were you studying here? Keep it simple, if you like. I’m no scientist.” She paused. “Can you think of any reason why you – and only you – might have been targeted?

  Ella’s head was spinning. “Targeted? No – I – I –” She took a deep breath. “I was studying… well, it’s a little complicated. But scientists developing anticancer drugs, things like that, they need primary cells to work with to model diseases, and – well, to study how cancers grow. But those cells can be really tricky and expensive to culture.” Her own voice sounded like it was coming from far away, and it was eerily calm. As if she wasn’t looking at her life’s work shattered on the floor in front of her. “I was looking at a way of… of making it easier to work with those really delicate kinds of cells. So doctors and scientists could work more efficiently to find a cure for cancer and other diseases.”

  “Sounds like good work,” the officer said. “Who’d want to do something like this to it? Like I said – everyone else’s work is untouched.” She paused again. “Do you know someone who has a grudge against you? A student you failed? An ex-boyfriend?”

  Ella shook her head, biting her lip. “No – I mean, my students’ marks haven’t come out yet, but I already know none of them failed. And an ex…”

  Ha. When would I have time for a love life? That’s a laugh!

  No. Everything she’d poured her heart and soul into for the past few years was lying destroyed in front of her.

  “I don’t have an ex. Not any from the last few years, anyway, and I doubt any of my high school boyfriends care enough to track me down and do this,” she said, though she noted the police officer’s skeptical eyebrow raise.

  “If someone’s trying to hurt you, we can help,” she said, tilting her head, watching Ella closely. Ella knew what the officer was hinting at – and she appreciated the concern, even if she wasn’t sure she’d ever trust the police with anything to do with her personal life. She’d been abandoned, forgotten and threatened one too many times as a teenager to ever feel comfortable sharing her secrets with someone in authority. But in any case, there was simply nothing to tell.

  “No, I swear, there’s been noth–” she started to say, before stopping, suddenly uncertain.

  Well. There’s been one or two things. But… that was just my imagination, wasn’t it? Way too many all-nighters, and way too much time wired out of my mind on caffeine in a coffee shop, furiously typing up my thesis.

  Ella shook her head. She wasn’t about to regale the police with a bunch of paranoia about how she’d been sure some guy in a café had been staring at her one time. Or that she was sure she’d seen the same guy standing on the corner of her street fifteen minutes later, despite the fact she’d left before him, and there was no way he could have beaten her there.

  She’d realized how crazy she sounded, even in her own head. Guys trying to make meaningful eye contact with women wasn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence. He hadn’t harassed her, or anything like that. She’d seen the same guy around – red hair, bulky build despite not being all that tall, pinched features – at the same café, but, she’d reasoned, he had every right to be there. It was probably just his local café. If anyone spent too much time at that café, it was her.

  But then, there were those phone calls too…

  Ella hesitated. Like most people, she didn’t have a landline these days, just a mobile phone – but that still didn’t stop her from getting unsolicited calls from blocked numbers. She’d just assumed they were from bozos trying to tell her her
laptop was going to explode any minute unless she remote accessed them into her bank account.

  “Miss Woodson?”

  She turned to find the officer looking at her, head still tilted slightly.

  “I – no,” Ella said, shaking her head. Guilt shot through her. Maybe she ought to tell the officer about the guy in the café after all?

  “Perhaps one thing,” she said quickly, before she could change her mind. “There was a guy. Uh, he had red hair. I noticed him looking at me in a café once or twice.”

  The officer frowned. “Did he talk to you at all? Say anything?”

  “No,” Ella said, shaking her head, already feeling foolish for having brought it up. “He was just kind of… there.”

  A frisson of fear shot through her stomach as the police officer simply stared at her for a long moment.

  “And that’s all? He just looked at you?”

  Ella bit her lip. Saying it out loud made her realize how silly she’d been. “Yeah. That’s all.”

  It was strange, how quickly she reverted to fear and wanting to hide at times like this. But she supposed that’s what being a kid like her – unwanted by everyone, bullied at school, only just tolerated at home, and never feeling loved or looked after – would do to you. Her father hadn’t wanted her. She’d been told more than once by her Aunt Jude that she was only looking after her out of respect for her mother’s memory.

  Sometimes, Ella didn’t blame her aunt for having lost her temper with her, or for getting frustrated with the burden that had been dumped on her when Ella’s father had shoved her on a plane from Los Angeles to Sydney, sending her to live with her mother’s family, whom she’d never met. But it still didn’t undo the hurt that knowing she was unwanted had done her, or all the worry her acting out as a teen had caused.