Hidden Crimes (15 page)

Their eagerness to let them go reminded Nate
of stories of Outsiders who abandoned unwanted infants because they
weren’t boys. The shifter children had been healthy apart from
their one flaw. They simply weren’t the progeny their parents had
dreamed of.

Their behavior sickened Nate.

He watched the lion lawyer check his
Blancpain watch and click his tongue in irritation, as if he were a
simple white collar shit being made late for an appointment. Did he
even care that these kids he was preying on were cousins to his own
kind?

“$80,000 per child,” Nate said, the amount
the agency’s books had recorded as their facilitation fee.

Adam grunted beside him. “Could have been ten
times that much once they reached the end buyers.”

“You know those babies were being cut up for
parts.”

Other entries in the files had made that
horribly clear.

“I know,” Adam said.

“We have to find the distributors.”

“We will. Even if we don’t squeeze it out of
these bastards, there are only so many people with the balls to
sell supplies for flesh rituals. Convictions for that carry
mandatory death sentences.”

“They should send them to hell dimensions,”
Nate growled. “Preferably ones where they can be killed
repeatedly.”

“We’ll get them. It might take some
old-fashioned detective work, but between us and Special Crimes,
we’ll get them all.”

Nate turned toward him, suddenly grateful his
shoulders weren’t the only ones carrying this. “Thank you for
letting me run with this. And for backing up me and Carmine when we
needed it.”

Adam dragged his hand uncomfortably down his
mouth. “I’m not sure that’s necessary. It’s thanks to you and your
instincts that we cut the head off this snake.”

Unease spread through Nate at his alpha’s
words. Did Adam really think they’d caught this scheme’s leader?
Didn’t he find it strange these mooks weren’t tripping over
themselves to inform on one another and cut a deal? At the least,
the paralegals and the office manager should have been squealing
their fool heads off. Maybe that happening was a matter of
time.

And maybe fear of the real snake was keeping
them silent.

He drew breath to speak but thought better of
it. It was good to have Adam back on his side, to not be wondering
how uncomfortable life would be if he pushed his boss past the
breaking point. Nate would wait and see what happened with their
suspects. Then, if he had to, he’d go to the mat again.

“It’s not over,” he burst out in spite of
that very sound reasoning.

Adam’s black eyebrows shot up above his soft
green eyes. “That’s what your gut is telling you?”

“Yes,” Nate felt he had to admit.

He braced for an explosion, but Adam’s only
response was a weary sigh.

THE squad’s traditional victory barbecue for
a big arrest was held on Adam and Ari’s roof. Everyone but Nate was
in a festive mood. Carmine and his wife were demonstrating a salsa
for Ari and Adam, who weren’t having much luck imitating the steps.
Tony rocked baby Kelsey, fast asleep in his arms. Ethan, the former
baby of the pack, tore through the partygoers with a pair of
barbecue tongs he’d stolen from his father.

“I’m the king of the grill!” he proclaimed in
a mock-adult growl.

Rick probably saved the next batch of ribs
from burning by snatching the boy off his feet mid-run.

Nate slanted his bottle of faerie stout to
his lips, wondering if he’d ever feel like himself again.

Maybe his keel would have been even if Evina
had been there. He’d considered inviting her. He’d called her
station, wanting to let her know they’d made arrests. Whoever
answered coolly told him that she was at a fire. He hadn’t left a
message, but worry for her safety had nagged at him ever since.
Grimacing, he took another swallow of strong beer. Maybe he ought
to worry for himself. Thinking about Evina as if she was or could
be part of his life was unlikely to lead anywhere useful.

“You’re quiet,” said a rumbling voice behind
his left shoulder.

Grant the gargoyle had flapped down to his
reinforced roost on the edge of Adam’s roof a quarter hour ago. If
gargoyles ate, Nate had never seen one do it. Though indifferent to
ribs and beer, Grant seemed to enjoy watching the others enjoy
themselves. Most gargoyles pretended they only spoke Pidgin
English, but Grant was a rebel among his kind. The size of a
minibus, he had a goblin’s head, a lion’s body, and the wings of a
bat. He was fur and flesh, but when he fell motionless he could
pass for a statue carved out of stone.

Nate glanced at him. The only exceptions to
his grayness were his great goblin eyes, which Nate noted were a
brighter yellow than Mrs. Erg’s. That the mind behind them was
highly perceptive, he had reason to know.

“I’m just tired,” he said, looking away
again.

“Hm.” Grant resettled his batwings with a
warm stir of air. “You must have worked harder than Carmine. He
seems quite energetic now.”

Nate knew Grant was poking fun at him. Rather
than laugh, the words
I’m afraid I’m in love
popped into his
head. He shook himself. That had to be the stout talking.

“You know a lot about magic, right?” he
asked.

“Most gargoyles do,” Grant said.

“What sort of spell would a person do with
the body . . . or parts of the body of a shifter child who couldn’t
change?”

Like most gargoyles, who considered
themselves the protectors of Resurrection, Grant was fascinated by
the police. Despite his familiarity with the things they faced,
Nate’s question widened his eyes. “You mean children who can’t
change because of a genetic flaw?”

“Yes.”

Grant mulled this over. “Shifters who can’t
change are rare. The gene for were-ism is usually dominant. Even
mixed bloods express it. Traditional wisdom holds that those who
can’t change still possess the magic. It’s simply locked within
their cells.”

“Why is that important?”

“It’s important because if it’s
un
locked, their flesh contains more magic than ordinary
weres. Gargoyles use communal mind power to enact big spells, but
others employ objects. Practitioners who tap the power of . . .
material such as that could gain the ability to change form
themselves. The bones of non-shifting wereanimals are known—though
not widely, for obvious reasons—to heal otherwise incurable
diseases. A human sorcerer might want to add wattage to a spell,
without paying for it with his or her personal life force. If a
magic worker didn’t care about morals, those kind of ingredients
would be priceless.”

“How priceless?”

“This is hearsay, you understand. No one
familiar with gargoyles would let us catch direct wind of this.
They know we’d inform on them at the drop of a hat.”

“But?”

Grant’s claws clicked on his concrete
platform, as if he had fingers to drum. “I’ve heard of non-shifting
were flesh going for as high as half a million dollars for a few
ounces.”

Nate barely had breath to whistle. “That’s a
freaking lot of cash.”

“Yes, it is. Is that what the case you just
closed involved?”

Closed
was stretching it, in Nate’s
opinion. He tried to multiply half a million by two dozen and who
knew how many cut-up bits. Where was all that money going? Maybe
more importantly, what was whoever was collecting it hoping to do
with it? For some people, money was an end in itself. For others,
it was a lever that could move worlds.

Grant nudged Nate’s leg with his gray lion’s
paw. Too big to pat Nate’s back without knocking him over, he was
doing the next best thing. “You should be proud. These crimes are
terrible, but at least you and your pack put a stop to them.”

Nate never could decide how young or old
Grant was. He often seemed wise, but he had an earnestness about
him that made it hard to judge. The longing in his voice when he
said
your pack
caused Nate to feel an unexpected kinship. By
not hiding his intelligence from Adam and the others, he’d set
himself apart from his own people. Nate wondered if finding a
slightly awkward place among a bunch of cops was worth giving up
all that.

He put his hand on Grant’s surprisingly warm
foreleg, the buzz of the gargoyle’s magic palpable through his fur.
“You’re a good friend,” he said. “The pack is lucky you chose to
live near us.”

“Hear-hear,” Ari said, salsaing to them for
the tail end of this. Nate noticed her footwork was better without
Adam to partner her. “I came to see if you two needed
anything.”

“We’re well,” Grant said. “Or I am. Perhaps
Nate would like to dance with you.”

Ari winked at Nate. “I don’t think so. Nate
knows how to ask a woman to dance himself.”

She hopped up to sit on Grant’s platform,
parking her little butt between his giant paws. Settled, she blew a
two-finger whistle to Tony. “Bring Kelsey over,” she said, because
he was dancing around with her dozing on his shoulder. “Grant
hasn’t met her yet.”

Ari and Grant had always struck Nate as
having a real friendship, maybe more than Grant did with anyone in
the pack. Sometimes Nate suspected Ari knew things about the
gargoyle the others didn’t. If she did, her offer startled him all
the same.

“Maybe you shouldn’t do that,” he said,
shifting uncomfortably over her. “Your daughter is very small.”

“I’ll hold her, silly.” Ari accepted the
blinking bundle from Tony. “There you are,” she cooed to her slowly
waking daughter. “Time to meet your Uncle Grant.”

Kelsey blew a spit bubble while Grant looked
stunned. Nate guessed the gargoyle hadn’t realized Ari thought of
him in those terms. With a caution that was amusing,
Uncle
Grant craned over Ari’s head to look down at the wriggling girl.
Kelsey was too young to know how fortunate she was. Not only would
she never be given up, she’d never lack for protectors who’d lay
down their lives for her—including Grant, he was sure. Smiling at
the gargoyle’s air of wonder, Nate put his hand on Ari’s
shoulder.

“I’m taking off,” he said when she looked up.
“Thanks for the great party.”

“You’re sure? It’s early.”

“I’m sure,” he said. “I’ve got beauty sleep
to catch up on.”

He only had two blocks to cover between
Adam’s house and his. The night was misty but pleasant in
temperature. As the grocer chained and locked his shop’s
accordion-style gate, his German shepherd woofed. The sound of
someone’s TV trailed out an open window, canned laughter mixing
with the real deal from Adam’s roof. Nate shoved his hands deeper
in his pockets. His fingers bumped his car keys.

Damn
, he thought as a longing to see
Evina seized his muscles.

The curse didn’t stop him from striding to
his building’s underground garage.

~

The EMT who was bandaging the bullet hole in
Evina’s bicep was a weretiger, a friend, and a single mother like
herself. Familiar with—and understanding of—Evina’s aversion to
emergency rooms, Freda had agreed to patch her up in her loft
office at the fire station. With luck, she’d be healed by morning.
The twins wouldn’t have to know their mommy had been hurt.

“You owe me drinks,” Freda said, snapping her
first aid bag shut. “We’ll pool babysitters and make it a girls
night out.”

“Don’t call it that,” Evina pleaded, gingerly
probing her gauze-wrapped arm. “My mother will want to come.”

“I
love
drinking with your mother,”
Freda declared. “She’s so handy when it comes to snagging the
man-candy.”

The sound of a low male growl down in the
garage bay drew Freda to the office’s big window. “Talk about
man-candy,” the EMT murmured.

Heat pricked the back of Evina’s neck, a
flush she couldn’t fight climbing up her face. Freda was a fun
friend and a free spirit. She knew all Evina’s tigers, quite a few
of them intimately. From her tone, Evina surmised the man-candy was
someone new to her.

Evina didn’t need three guesses. Her body was
already telling her who it was.

Sure enough, when she went to look, Nate was
at the back entrance. Nights were getting cooler. Over slim black
jeans, Nate wore a snazzy fitted leather jacket with lapels, the
same he’d loaned to her outside the factory. Mist surrounded him
like a halo, but he was no angel. From his shiny ponytail to his
Varvatos boots, he was an advertisement for how devilish bad boys
could be. Tonight, Liam wasn’t his challenger. Her third man
Jonah—his temper short from being stuck here holding the fort while
his alpha and pridemates had battled danger—was barring Nate’s path
into the fire house.

It probably didn’t help his control that his
alpha was currently injured.

All Nate did in response to Jonah’s growl was
lift his groomed eyebrows.