Big Bad Becker: The Outlier Prophecies, #1.5

By Tina Gower

Ian Becker adjusts to pack life after his co-worker, Kate Hale, makes a generous offer. He’s determined to prevent negative consequences for her, except in his line of work that might be an impossible promise.

This is a 40,000 word novella in The Outlier Prophecies world. This story can be read out of order from the main series. Big Bad Becker takes place between the end of book one, Romancing the Null, and before the start of book two, Conditional Probability of Attraction. Big Bad Becker is NOT a retelling of Romancing the Null through Becker's POV. It has its own plot, new scenes, and serves as an extra for readers who want to know what happened between the two books.

Books in The Outlier Prophecies Series:

Romancing the Null (book one)
Big Bad Becker (short novel between books one and two)
Conditional Probability of Attraction (book two)
The Werewolf Coefficient (book three)
Standard Deviation of Death (book four)
Shifter Variance (book five)
Correlation of Fate (book six)
Half Cup Magic (Ali's book--coming soon!)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tina Gower
• Release date: Jan 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386842033

Book preview

Chapter 1

Ian Becker woke like he normally did. Breath sawing in and out like he’d run a marathon, sweat pouring off his temples, his sheets wrapped around him like a straightjacket, and his hands balled into a fist. And a hard- on .

The hard-on was new and completely unwelcome.

His phone buzzed against his thigh. Oh right, the reason he’d been pulled from what he assumed was another faceless, nameless nightmare. The kind where you can feel you weren’t enjoying it, but you don’t remember a gods-damned detail. Nothing to retell your counselor dad, so he thinks you’re being difficult when he asks you to describe it and you say, I don’t know.

Ian?

He blinked, his thoughts foggy. What? He gripped his phone. Oh shit, someone was talking to him.

What? His voice was gravely and thick with sleep. He hadn’t mean to bark the word out, but you know what? Now that he thought about it, whoever it was had called him at four in the morning, and he’d gotten off his shift only an hour ago. Hells, I was sleeping, asshole.

Make that: he’d gotten off two shifts. Back-to-back.

Ian. Shoot, man, I’m sorry, but I need your nose on a case.

Detective Wu, of course. Ian owed Wu, and he couldn’t afford to appear like he was slipping. Again. Wu wouldn’t turn him in to their captain at Angel’s Peak Police Department, but these things had a way of leaking out all over. Sure, Angel’s Peak was one of the largest cities in northern California, but it was still northern California, which meant the gossip mill worked overtime grinding out any useful nuggets of hearsay gold.

He dragged his hand down his face in hopes to bring him back to reality. Yeah, Wu. Gods. I’m sorry I snapped at you. I— He shook away the excuse. I’ll be right there.

I got it with me. It’s not official, you know?

Right. That meant Wu had no leads beyond whatever scrap of fabric, paper, or decomposed food or human remains he wanted Ian to sniff. It meant it wasn’t exactly legal evidence.

I’ll just swing it by your house? I thought you’d be in the break room.

No. No, he wasn’t in the break room, damn it. He should have been sleeping in the break room. That’s where he always slept, but A.K. everything had gotten totally screwed up.

A.K. After Kate. He’d started thinking of time recently as Before Kate and After Kate. Giving it a cute name didn’t paint it any prettier. It was becoming an obsession. Bad sign. Horrible, actually.

He stretched his aching limbs as he rose from the bed, rubbing the shrink-wrapped, too-tight feeling from his skin. The dull headache had crept back as well. Early symptoms of pack bonding. The bonding didn’t cause the problem, but resisting it did. Attempting to stay away from Kate? Put that one in the not working column.

No. I’m on my way out. Ian rattled off an address to a 24-hour diner just outside of town. It would take him about forty minutes to get there. It would be across the street from Kate’s apartment. See? Bad sign.

He nearly called it off about a mile from the diner. Being this close to her would be too much of a temptation. Using Kate as pack was only meant to be the one time. In the beginning. One time that turned into two times. And to be fair, she had left the door open for him to return.

If you need more…

I won’t bother you.

But won’t quitting after starting—I thought you need pack. Ali says werewolves can’t—

I’ll call you.

But the last brush off of I’ll call was said with a sigh and longing looks Kate hadn't seen. He'd meant to be clear that it had been the last and only time, but he hadn't spoken with enough feeling. Her body language was definitely holding up signs for him to return if he needed it. She had made the prospect all welcoming and warm. She shouldn’t have done that.

He needed pack like he needed air. Wolves used touch, the pressure of bodies piled against each other, to sooth themselves, to stay calm and collected. He could use a human or partner of any other species to fill the emotional and physical need, but outside of other wolves, most people found bonding to be invasive. Lacking personal space. Clingy.

A few days before, they’d worked a case together: Jack Roberts, a weather oracle, had been destined to die. Super high probability. They stopped it, only to have a ripple come back and bite Jack anyway. Well, more like slam into him in the form of a traffic accident. As in, a car hit him going full speed while Jack crossed the street, in a crosswalk, on a walk signal. He’d done everything right and The Fates just couldn’t have that. Those three bitches had to have it their way this time. Jack had landed himself in the hospital for the next month at minimum. But before that, before all that, he and Kate thought Jack had died.

It had been a horrible day when Ian took that case. The anniversary of his pack’s murder was around the corner. He’d been following leads in his off time. Thought he had one in a Fae family, but when they turned up dead, he thought this was it. He was going to snap.

He needed a reset. Something had gone wrong, and he’d started up the obsessing again. He had wanted answers, and thought he could get them without trading in his mental health. Apparently, he’d miscalculated. He’d have to call Lipski, his partner at the police department, and have him get Ian's dads to come out and do the whole routine all over again.

This time he’d go willingly. The tranquilizer (if he was freaking). The therapy (he’d never admit it helped). The strict diet (a game changer).

This time he’d do it with more dignity. He wouldn’t wait until he flipped out on his co-workers. (That’s where Wu came in—the guy had supported him and put in a good word after each of his outbursts). He wouldn’t break his desk or huddle in a corner rocking and crying while Lipski coaxed him out. He wouldn’t chew through the seat belt while Lipski drove him to his house so his dads could take him to his childhood home to recover.

Funny how it had taken him four years to get to that point. You’d expect the grief to happen immediately, but he’d put it off by focusing on their case. Secretly. And the pack withdrawals? He chased those off with tequila.

Anyway, he had mentally prepared himself, typed everything out in an email to Lipski. His finger had been hovering over the send button when Kate Hale smacked that folder over his tablet and demanded his attention.

Detective Ian Becker, I presume?

Just like that. She had no clue he was two seconds away from a breakdown. His lungs burned like they did before a panic attack. But her gross misunderstanding of his status amused and annoyed the hells out of him. Detective? Not ever likely at this rate. Was she being a jerk? Or did she truly not know how many times he’d failed the exam?

But she didn’t make him feel less of a wolf. Not on Jack’s case. And not during what she'd done for him after. She’d pushed him to be a better cop than he’d been in the last year.

See? This was why he needed to call Wu back and tell him to meet somewhere else.

Except now, with a mile between him and the diner, he really could use some eggs. Eggs. It would be just the eggs and then he’d get back in his car and go home. Sleep. Curl around the scent she’d left on his pillow.

Never mind. He’d go to the break room.

Ironically, Food wasn’t quick at Speedy’s Diner. It wasn’t even the best diner in Angel’s Peak, not with the hefty competition of retro style diners dotted all over the north of the state. Hells, there were restaurants that would make the snobbiest of foodies salivate. But Speedy’s was less than a mile from a certain fateless.

Damn, Kate had to be fateless of all things. It meant oracles couldn’t get a read on her. Speaking of irony, her entire job revolved around oracles’ predictions. They predicted and she ran the math on the likelihood the event would occur. She was the glue in the cogs of society and she couldn’t benefit from it. He couldn’t even look her probability numbers up to see if she was in danger on an hourly basis. And he had a feeling she would be in constant trouble. The threat of it followed her around like the afterbite of a cheap perfume.

Not that she smelled like cheap perfume. More like coconut and vanilla. Not exactly like that, but his advanced werewolf olfactory system categorized it that way. One of the benefits of werewolf ancestry. You got the enhanced senses, but not the ability to shift, and all the burden of emotional irregularity. If you were wolf enough, which Ian was. Lucky him. There weren’t any real shifting wolves left. Latent werewolves, so-called experts dubbed people like him.

His eggs arrived and his hunger took over. He took his frustration out on the meal.

He was halfway through his eggs, shoving them in like a dying wish when Wu slid into the booth across from him.

Holy hells. Wu whistled low under his breath. Is that a seven egg spinach omelet? The plate is bigger than my head.

You got something for me, or did you just come here to audition as my food critic?

Wu pinned him with a fine-be-a-dick stare and passed a baggie under the booth. Ian unzipped the plastic with a loud verp and took a long whiff. He should tell the guys not to put the items in plastic. Also to not remove them from the scene. He’d get more if he could place them in context. He closed the baggie up and shoved it aside, then went back to his eggs and definitely-not thinking about the dark-haired girl sleeping in her apartment across the street.

Well? Wu prompted.

Mangos. Ian managed around a bite of spinach and mushroom.

Mangos?

Mangos. He scooped in a few more bites and realized Wu wasn’t going to leave him alone. Look, it’s not a science here. I’m telling you what’s different about the shirt, and it’s mangos. I can tell you what brand of detergent he uses, the fact he’s going Type II diabetic or losing a lot of weight and I can smell the keytones. My guess? Diabetic. Too much sugar and remnants of cinnamon rolls. But the mangos are fresh, just off a truck. I could smell the wood boxes they transport them in and a hint of juice on his shirt. So: mangos.

Wu sat back in the seat, his unhappy gaze wandering out the window where the lights from passing morning traffic glimmered. Ian watched him for a minute while he ate, attacking his eggs with a little less gusto than before.

Wu’s shoulders slumped, as if he wasn't exactly excited to hear Becker’s profile, and Ian set his fork on the plate with a clatter. Were you hoping I’d say it was the one armed man, cause—

No, Wu cut him off. I was hoping you’d say drugs, or the prostitute who works the corner of Ninth and Warner.

Ian recoiled. His eyebrows slammed together. How would I know what the prostitute on Ninth and Warner smells like?

Wu sighed. Then gave his chest a little rub, as if it hurt. He shook his head. Listen, do me a favor and toss that, will you? He nodded his head at the evidence bag.

Ian shrugged. Sure.

A waitress came over with a swing to her