“By what metric do you gaugethat?” Ken drawled.
Duncan snorted from his spot in the front passenger seat.
* * *
Dewi barely waitedfor Badger to pull to a complete stop in the driveway before she threw her door open and leapt out, hitting the ground at a literal run. The front door was unlocked and Dewi didn’t bother knocking as she burst in, resisting the urge to reach for the gun holstered in her rear waistband.
“What happened?” she barked.
Everyone turned at her entrance. Nami sat on the couch and looked exhausted, with a sleeping Maisie on her shoulder.
The others stood gathered around where Tamsin sat on the floor facing Carl, and between them…
Dewi slid to a stop as Badger and Duncan barely avoided running into her. “Oh, holy fu-dging shi-irtballs,” Dewi whispered.
“Ye gotta be kiddin’ me!” Badger said.
“Well, that’s unexpected,” Duncan said.
Ken finally caught up, closing the front door behind him. “What hap—oh,shit.”
On the floor between Carl and Tamsin the large, mostly brown corgi puppy, which had silenced when startled by their entrance, sniffled as it looked at them with Bebe’s sweet brown eyes before mournfully howling again.
CHAPTERTHIRTY
DEWI
Dewi saton the couch with Bebe snuggled in her lap, where the girl—eh, puppy—had just fallen asleep after exhausting herself crying.
Eh, howling.
“Run us through what happened, please?” Dewi asked. “Every. Detail. From the beginning. Where everyone was and what they were doing—everything. No matter how small the detail.”
Tamsin now held Maisie, who’d just finished nursing. “I was playing with Bebe. Brianna, Nami, and Malyah were in the kitchen. Carl and Mateo were outside doing yard work. Maisie was sleeping in her little bouncer recliner. I had put the Yellowstone wolves video on the telly that Bebe loves so much, thinking I could get her to settle for a nap.”
The young woman blinked back tears. “Then Bebe brought me one of the balls from her skittles set—”
“Her what?” Dewi asked.
“The toy bowling set,” Carl clarified, pointing to where it sat in the corner with other toys.
“Yes, sorry,” Tamsin said. “Anyway, I thought she wanted to play with that, but she said no, she wanted me to go out to the garden with her and throw the ball for her and… Well, she wanted to play fetch. I haven’t worked with her on shifting for a couple of weeks now, with the baby and everything, so I wasn’t even thinking about that. I left Maisie inside with Nami and went out with Bebe and…”
She looked at a loss for words. “The third throw, Bebe shifted and went rolling across the yard when she tripped over her clothing. I was…gobsmacked, quite frankly. By the time I finally processed what happened, I dashed after her and caught her. I suppose I must have cried out.”
“And we heard her,” Carl said. “I guess that’s about the same time Nami came streaking out of the back door, screaming bloody murder. We were working around the side of the house and didn’t see Bebe shift. We came running, worried someone was attacking them.”
Dewi looked at Nami, but she still appeared shell-shocked, so Dewi held off asking her any questions.
“Did anyone else see what happened?” Duncan grimly asked. “Neighbors?”
“Security cameras?” Badger asked.
Mateo shook his head. “No. There aren’t any trained on the backyard. Between the trees, fence, and shrubbery, there’s no way anyone saw. We’re secure there. The ones we have don’t cover that part of the yard because it’s not near a window or door.”
“Then what happened, Tamsin?” Dewi asked.
“At first,” Tamsin said, “I was so happy for her and proud of her that it didn’t fully register with me.”
