Caged, page 4
“We’ve searched the surrounding woods, but Sonar’s not picking up any traces to suggest someone else was here recently.” He nodded toward Vincent through the open doorway. “Did Wince tell you about the fur in the vehicle?”
“Yes, and I know who it was.” Liam straightened his lips into a firm line. “Brenna was here.”
Blake’s face didn’t betray any reaction, an impressive feat considering he’d just learned his alpha’s sister had been at the crime scene. He reached up to rub the thick, neatly trimmed beard that covered his jaw. “What do we know?”
“She turned Bannon. Bannon ate Varca.” He pointed. “Brenna was in this room. I want to know where she is now. Find her. Don’t go into the room until Vince and Kylie tell you it’s clear.”
Sonar dropped her snout to the floor, sniffing around the landing to pick up Brenna’s scent. Blake held Liam’s gaze, glanced quickly at me, then back to his alpha. I recognized the question in the gesture.
“She’s here to work the murder with Agent Bradford,” Liam said, his voice empty of emotion. “Nothing else.”
Neither man looked particularly comforted by the assertion. Blake reluctantly nodded to me. “Mother Renard.” He didn’t wait for a response before focusing on Andy.
Andy held out his hand. “Agent Andrew Bradford, FBI.”
Blake accepted the handshake. “Detective Blake Giles. Call me Blake.”
“Andy.”
Liam rolled his shoulders, then gestured for Andy and me to follow him. “Mr. Bannon’s business partner is waiting downstairs.”
“How’s she taking the news?” Andy asked, following the alpha to the staircase.
“Still in shock, so it’s hard to tell. I’m heading down to talk to her now.”
Andy followed him as Liam headed for the stairs, but I hung back for a second, glancing into the room where Peasblossom had insisted on accompanying Vincent. My attention immediately zeroed in on a spot of pink against the dark grey carpet—heading straight for the body.
“Don’t touch the body!” I dashed into the room and scooped up the pixie, careful not to hurt her already damaged wings.
Peasblossom yelped in protest. “Hey! I want to see!”
Vincent and Kylie both looked up at me. Vincent looked sympathetic and quickly returned his attention to the tweezers and baggie he held in his hands. A five- foot area in front of him rippled with magic, with undulating shapes curling into the air like smoke from a series of tiny campfires. I recognized the forensic spell he’d taught me, the one that created a 3D foggy image of the species and sex of the creature who left trace evidence at the scene. Each of those misty figures represented a hair or a spot of blood or sweat. Vincent followed the shapes down, gathering the physical evidence to analyze in the lab.
Kylie’s face remained expressionless. A deadpan expression, if I allowed myself the pun. She stared at me for a long, deliberate second before resuming her work.
Yep, still mad.
I scowled and carried Peasblossom out of the room. “What’s to see? He’s only so much meat now.”
“I could have found a clue.” She flopped onto my shoulder in a sulk. “Just because I can’t fly doesn’t mean I can’t help.”
“I know,” I said reasonably. “Which is why I need you to come with me when we interview this witness. You’re so good at telling when someone is lying.”
Peasblossom perked up. “I am, aren’t I? Like when you said you didn’t eat the last Oreo. I knew you were lying.”
Neither Andy nor Liam had waited for me, and I had to hurry down the stairs in a less than dignified manner to catch them up before they reached the witness. The animal heads and their false eyes seemed to follow my every movement, making for a surreal trip. As we approached Ms. Lin, the officer who’d been speaking with her when we arrived excused himself and came to stand before Liam.
“Near as I can tell she’s human,” he said in a low tone. “But she smells like herbs and dogs. Could be a shifter. Or a witch.” The officer glanced at me when he said the last part, then returned his focus to Liam. “According to her, she and her partner had a meeting this morning with a potential client. Mr. Bannon never showed up. Ms. Lin used the GPS on his company vehicle to locate him here and came to confront him about missing the meeting. When she got here, no one answered. Apparently, her dog Justice is trained as a sort of guard dog, so when he whined and scratched at the door, Ms. Lin took his reaction to mean something was wrong and tried the knob. She let herself in, went upstairs…”
“That’s when she opened the door to the office and saw Adrian,” Andy finished.
The officer nodded. “She caught a glimpse of the body, then she said a wolf leapt at her. She barely got the door closed in time to avoid letting it out. Then she called 911.”
Liam looked at me. “Can you tell if she’s a witch?”
“If she’s carrying items of power, yes. If she’s a new or inexperienced witch, yes. If not, then she could hide what she is from me if she wanted to.” I flexed my fingers, pushing a wave of magic toward the couch even as I explained the limits of what I could detect. Silver mist rolled out, visible only to me and Peasblossom, but there was no answering spark of another color. “No magic that I can see. I’ll keep an eye on her, see if she gives anything away.”
Liam nodded and approached the couch. “Ms. Lin? I’m Detective Sergeant Osbourne. This is Agent Bradford with the FBI and this is Ms. Renard, our consultant. I know you’ve been answering questions for a while now, but I need to ask you a few more.”
“Call me May.” Her voice was soft and subdued, but her shoulders had a firm set to them, and she lifted her chin when she spoke. “Have you found Paul?”
“Not yet, but we’re still looking. You told Officer Phillips that Mr. Bannon missed a business meeting. Is there a reason you worried enough to track him down via GPS? Any reason you didn’t think he’d maybe just forgotten, overslept?”
May let out a short breath. “We were meeting with the board of a rehabilitation clinic to discuss a partnership. It was a big deal, Paul wouldn’t have missed it. Not even for him.”
Irritation thinned her voice when she referred to Varca. Liam leaned closer. “Sounds like you’ve met Mr. Varca before.”
This time there was no mistaking the anger on May’s face. “Yes.” She closed her hands into fists. “This is all his fault. That miserable little cretin.”
“What did he do?” Liam asked.
May reached down and her dog immediately lifted his head and put his chin on her knee, letting her stroke her hand over his ears and down his back. “His ignorance was boundless,” she muttered. “Mr. Varca has been after Paul and me to provide him with a dog for years. Not that he has any true need for a service animal, you understand. He merely wants one. Another sign of his dominance over the animal kingdom. Honestly, he’d do better to put the work into choosing his own animal and going through obedience school.” She pressed her lips into a thin line. “Might have done him some good too. Obedience school.”
“So why didn’t he?” Andy asked. “Anyone can buy a dog and sign it up for obedience school. Adrian had the money.”
“Oh, he had the money all right,” May agreed. “What he didn’t have was the personality.” She scratched Justice behind the ear and the dog rubbed his chin on her leg. “Dogs aren’t objects. You can’t just pick the one you want, you have to be mindful of the dog’s needs, physical and emotional. Varca wanted a large, ‘scary’ dog.” She rolled her eyes. “To him, a dog was a way to show off his power. But he had none, and any dog that fit his desired image would sense that.”
“He wasn’t alpha enough for the type of dog he wanted,” Andy observed.
“Exactly. He had it in his head that we could change that. That Paul and I could train a dog to serve him and be everything he wanted it to be. But that’s not how it works. Not to mention none of our dogs looked frightening enough to him. We deal mostly with labs. He kept asking if he could buy his own dog and send it to us to train. But as I explained to him a thousand times, it’s not a matter of money. It’s a matter of quality. Not all dogs make good service animals, and based on his criteria, I have zero confidence that he could have chosen a dog we could train.”
“If both you and Paul refused to do what Varca wanted, then why was Paul here?” Liam asked.
“I believe Varca lured him here with the promise of another ‘consultation fee.’” May sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Varca liked to use his money to manipulate people. I’m sorry to say Paul wasn’t immune.”
“So you think Varca bought a dog, bribed Paul to come and take a look at it, and was subsequently attacked by the dog?”
“He keeps saying dog,” Peasblossom hissed. “It wasn’t a—”
“That was no dog,” May said sharply. “That was a wolf.”
Liam dropped a hand to his belt, running his palm over his badge as if reminding himself to stay calm. “I—”
“Look, let me save you some time,” May interrupted. “I’m aware that the rangers have been hiding a wolf resurgence for several years now. I’ve seen enough wolves recently to know it’s not just fear-mongering or rumors started by the local papers. Wolves are making their way back to Ohio.”
I fought to keep my face blank. To the best of my knowledge, wolves were not repopulating Ohio. But if the New Moon Recovery Center was nearby, then it was entirely possible that what May was actually seeing were werewolves.
“And what’s more,” May continued, staring into Liam’s eyes, “Varca knew about the wolves too. That…man, actually wanted me to train a wolf for him. A wolf.”
Liam gripped the sleeves of his shirt, hiding his reaction between a sharp jerk at the cuffs to pull them higher up his arm. May’s gaze sharpened, and she watched the alpha with the sort of intense stare that made me think she spent a lot of time analyzing body language.
Andy stepped forward, drawing May’s attention from the alpha’s reaction. “He wanted a wolf for a service animal?”
May snorted. “He read an article online about a diabetic trucker that adopted a wolf and realized the wolf was alerting him when he had low blood sugar. Not to mention that service animal provider in Wisconsin that claims they can provide service wolves—don’t even get me started on them. Their only saving grace is they refused to sell one to Varca. Nevertheless, he was convinced wolves could be trained, and he wanted one. Badly. He was willing to pay a criminal sum of money for a service wolf.” She scoffed. “Service wolf,” she muttered. “Can you imagine?”
“Could Paul have been here to train a wolf?” I asked.
The dog trainer looked at me as if I were a heckler in an elementary school classroom. “No,” she said shortly. “Paul knew as well as I do that wolves don’t make good service animals. Most dogs don’t even make good service animals. It takes careful breeding and a lot of training even with the right animal. Wolves have a natural instinct to avoid humans, and they don’t bond like dogs do. Paul knew that.”
“Then why was he here?” I asked gently.
May sighed. “Varca knew a lot of hunters. It’s possible that he got a wolf and called Paul to tell him. Paul would have realized the idiot put his life in danger and come to stop him from getting himself killed.” Her shoulders fell slightly. “And then the wolf did what a wolf does when it’s cornered.”
Movement behind us made us all turn, and we watched two men carry a large covered box down the stairs and out the door. A battered dark blue sheet covered what I suspected was the dog cage I’d seen them bring to the room where the man lay unconscious. Paul’s body would be in that cage.
“What will happen to the wolf?” May asked.
“If it’s gotten a taste for humans, it could be dangerous,” Liam answered carefully. “But we’ll try to find somewhere to take it first.”
May nodded, but the expression on her face suggested she didn’t have high hopes for the beast’s survival. It made me like her more that she cared. Justice nuzzled her leg in sympathy.
“You mentioned that you’d noticed more wolves in the area,” Liam said slowly. “Did Paul notice as well?”
“Of course.”
“Did Paul hunt?”
May frowned. “As a matter of fact, he did. Does,” she corrected herself quickly. “Why do you ask?”
Liam kept his voice calm, unaccusing. “Could he have captured—”
“No,” May snapped. “Even if Paul were willing to do something so foolish as to give a man like Varca a pet he had no hope of controlling—trained or not—he would never catch a wild wolf and pass it off as safe. He’d have to find a pup and raise it himself if he wanted even a prayer of training it. That’s how we train our dogs, all of them raised from pups.”
“You never get your dogs anywhere else? You raise them all yourself, breed them yourself?” Andy asked, scribbling furiously in his notebook.
May hesitated. It was quick, there and gone so fast I would have missed it if I hadn’t been watching so carefully. Then she nodded.
Before I could follow up on that hesitation, Blake and Sonar approached from the direction of the staircase. The detective didn’t look encouraged, and I could tell he didn’t have any good news to share. Liam nodded at Blake that he’d seen him, then addressed May.
“Thank you, Ms. Lin. If I have anymore questions, I’ll call you.” He retrieved his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out a business card. “Take this. If you think of anything else, please call me.”
May accepted his card. “So I can leave now?”
“Yes.”
A hint of relief softened May’s features and she stood, a little faster than I’d expected. Justice rose to all fours beside her, his eyes alert, his posture straight. May nodded at us and left the house with her dog padding beside her. I noted that Justice made no move to get ahead of May, and didn’t trail behind her either. A very well-trained dog, who respected his owner as his alpha.
“There’s no trace of Brenna anywhere but the path from the crime scene to Paul’s vehicle,” Blake said under his breath as soon as we approached. “Near as we can tell, she came here in that vehicle, went up to the room, and disappeared. The only possibility I can think of is that there was another vehicle here, parked near enough to Paul’s vehicle that the paths overlapped. She could have left the room and got in the second vehicle and been driven away.”
“Or she could have driven herself away,” I pointed out.
Liam and Blake stared at me. Neither look was particularly friendly.
“Brenna is a therapist at the center. She wouldn’t have left a new wolf behind like that,” Liam said calmly. “Especially not shut inside with a human.”
I didn’t know Brenna, so I couldn’t speak to that assertion at all. And based on the expressions on Blake and Liam’s faces, now wasn’t the time for an educated guess.
“We did find Bannon’s cell phone, though.” Blake handed the device to Liam. “Looks like he called Varca this morning.”
“He called Adrian?” Andy asked, looking up from his notebook.
“Yeah.”
“If Bannon called Varca, then maybe Ms. Lin didn’t know her partner as well as she thought she did.” Liam clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides. “Maybe Bannon decided to try and give Varca the wolf he wanted.” He locked his gaze on Blake. “Take Sonar and search Bannon’s house. If he did somehow manage to catch Brenna, there might be evidence she was there.”
“I’ll pull Adrian’s phone records,” Andy said, putting away his notebook. “Chances are if Bannon was planning to get Varca a wolf, he didn’t just show up with one in his backseat. They’d have talked on the phone, met in person, planned it.”
“Good.” Liam turned and headed for the door, his shoulders stiff. “It’s time I had a chat with Paul about my sister.”
Chapter 5
“We’ll follow you,” Andy said, trailing Liam out of the house.
I looked ahead to where Blake and Sonar were climbing into their vehicle, and my gaze lingered on Sonar. Blake had Sonar, May had Justice. It all made me feel Scath’s absence in a way I hadn’t an hour ago. I hadn’t known the cat sith long, and if I were honest, I still didn’t understand what her intentions were toward me. But she’d saved my life. She’d almost died helping me. Whatever her intentions, she’d earned my loyalty, and she was starting to feel very much like a friend. A friend I missed.
Liam followed my gaze. “How’s Scath doing?”
I tried to muster a confident smile. “She’s healing. It’s slow going though, unfortunately. All that iron…” A lump rose in my throat to choke off any further words. Images of Scath being shredded by iron flechettes fired from a specialized anti-fey assault weapon swarmed my mind’s eye, and I swore I could smell her blood all over me again. So much blood. So much iron. Bile washed against the back of my throat, and I swallowed hard.
“I’m glad she’s doing better.” Liam glanced down at his shirt, frowning when he noticed he’d missed a button. He pressed his lips together and pinched the button before shoving it through the appropriate slit. “Edwin is healing. He had that silver lodged in his face for over six months, and the wizard’s magic was the only thing between him and death by silver poisoning. If he can make it, so can Scath. She’s strong, she’ll get through this.”
I nodded, but didn’t say anything. If I talked, it might give the tears burning behind my eyelids permission to fall, and none of us wanted a soggy witch on a murder case.
“Who’s Edwin?” Andy asked.
“A shifter who was involved in our last case,” Liam answered, brushing a hand down his shirt. “Long story.”
“Last case?” Andy echoed.
“Roger Temple, rogue paramilitary company.” Liam glanced from Andy to me and back. “Did she mention that one?”
And I’d wondered how this conversation could get worse. “I told him,” I said, forcing myself to straighten. “I—”
