Bearly a Memory: Pacific Northwest Bears: (Shifter Romance) Read Online Free Page A

action. He’d let her keep thinking that until he figured out the extent of the mystery.
    Tammy was happy to give him Brooklyn’s contact information. It was for her parents who also lived in San Francisco.
    Thanking her, he hung up and grabbed the purse. Knowing there may be a bigger reason for this woman to be hiding out in their town made Tanner anxious. He needed to get to the hospital and see if she was awake.
    He thanked Betty and watched as she locked the room back up. Tanner wanted Brooklyn to know her room hadn’t been violated. He figured she’d already had a worse day than him; she didn’t need to feel like someone rifled through her panties.
    Shit, he needed to not think about the panties.
    He headed to his black SUV that had blacked out windows and black rims. It said Apex Sheriff on the side, but the overall appearance of the vehicle made it blend in. Gave him the opportunity to stay out of sight when he needed to. He jumped in and hit his Bluetooth to call her parents while he drove.
    The phone only rang once, and a woman with a frantic voice picked up. “Brooklyn, is that you baby?”
    Clearing his throat, Tanner introduced himself. “No, ma’am. I’m Sheriff Rochon. I got your contact information from Brooklyn’s work.”
    “Oh, no lord, tell me she’s not dead,” the woman cried.
    “No, ma’am. She is not dead,” he said, then realized he didn’t know because he hadn’t checked in on her.
    “Your daughter was hiking in the woods and fell. She’s at our local hospital. I’m on my way there now to check in on her,” Tanner explained.
    “What hospital? I’ll drag my husband away from his model trains, and we’ll be there,” the woman said.
    “Mrs. Nishi, did you know where your daughter was?” Tanner needed to know if Brooklyn had taken a vacation or was on the run.
    “No, the girl just up and vanished. The police here wouldn’t do anything until she’d been gone for seventy-two hours. They finally let us file a missing person’s report yesterday. Not that it is going to do any good. They say adults can leave without telling their parents where they are going. Shit, I know that, doesn’t mean that I don’t know when something is wrong. My baby would never go days without calling me. Those bastards are sitting on their asses eating donuts and not looking for my baby girl!” The woman said this with a screech.
    “Ma’am, your daughter didn’t mention anything about the shooting at her work, did she?” Tanner kept up with the questioning as he drove.
    “No, she didn’t, and my girl tells me everything. I heard about it on the news. I told them they probably kidnapped her, but they said the security cameras didn’t show Brooklyn there,” she explained.
    That was puzzling. How did she link to the shootings? Or did she at all? Maybe having something so violent happen just scared her enough into running.
    “Mrs. Nishi, do you think your daughter just wanted a break? Or had a vacation planned that she hadn’t mentioned?”
    “Honey, you can call me Maybelle, I’m nobody's ma’am,” the woman said slyly. “My daughter doesn’t take vacations, Sheriff. Hell, I made her take up knitting because she’d get so stressed out at work. My daughter loves her job. She wouldn’t abandon it. Do you think she is in some kind of trouble?”
    Tanner wasn’t about to lie to her. “I honestly don’t know, Maybelle. Everyone seems surprised by her disappearance and her decision to drive two states away without telling her family. Well, that seems suspicious to me. I haven’t had a chance to talk to Brooklyn yet. Do you think you can keep this quiet? Let me do some investigating before you visit? If she’s running from someone, we don’t want to tip them off to her location. We may all be overreacting, and this was just a case of her needing a break. But I’d feel a lot more comfortable knowing that was the situation and not that she needs help.”
    “Well now, aren’t you a