“Holy nutjob,” Sonny huffed, shaking his head.
“Yeah,” Colby agreed. “Pete?”
Pete grumbled something under his breath but nodded to Colby and raised his head.
“Based on everything he just said, Colby felt that undermining their plan made more sense than actually engaging with the wackos,” he said sharply. “To that end, BB snuck into the camp yesterday afternoon and released their hounds.” He snorted and hummed a few bars ofWho let the dogs out?before continuing.
“While the camp was mostly empty, we chewed through the anchor lines of several of the lean-to buildings the camp is made of. By the time they tracked the dogs down and dragged them back to camp, four had already toppled in the wind. No injuries, no verifiable attack, just some bad luck to slow them down.”
“Okay,” Kade muttered. “It’ll distract them while they rebuild, but how’s that going to help keep them from attacking us?”
Colby shrugged. “If you don’t have a fox on staff, you’ve got a vigilante helping you out. While I was there, he snuck up and helped himself to the key to their munitions building right after they piled a crap ton of weapons and ammo into it. Picked it right out of the leader’s pocket and took off at full speed before anyone but me even knew he was there.”
Kade and I exchanged a stunned look. First a cat-like shifter and now a fox? Where the hell were all these allies coming from?
“We absolutely don’t have a fox on staff,” I said slowly, “and we’ve combed through the records of all of the shifters we’ve had enrolled in the past several years without finding one, either. They’re a little more rare than some other species.”
“This one even more so,” Colby offered. “If I’m right, he was a gray Tibetan sand fox.”
“Really?” Sonny cleared his throat. “I thought they were extinct.”
“Naw,” Colby disagreed, “not even endangered, actually, but they are very rare in this part of the world.
No kidding?” Sonny smirked at Kade. “Sound familiar?”
“You’re awful sassy without your husband here to defend your fluffy ass,” Kade grumbled good-naturedly, flipping him a friendlygo fuck yourselfgesture that had the rest of us grinning.
“Let’s get back on track,” I suggested when it looked like we might be about to devolve into a frat boy level insult war instead of focusing on the issue at hand. “How large of a distraction do you see that being? Surely, they have a backup key or can break into the shed fairly easily?”
Colby shrugged. “Can’t be sure, of course,” he admitted. “It did look like it was quite more solidly built than the others and they could have another key but based on the frantic searching when they realized it was missing, I got the impression that they may not. My best guess is that we’re safe from an attack tonight, at least.”
“Anyone else with something to add?” I asked, looking round the table.
“I might but I’m not really sure,” Kade began with a frown and blew out a breath before reaching into his pocket to withdraw a packet of folded notebook pages. Shoving it across the table toward me, he stayed uncharacteristically silent as I unfolded the pages and read through the neatly written lines.
“Where’d you get this?”
Kade lifted his hands in awho knowsgesture. “Someone shoved it under the door to the house last night and rang the bell. By the time I got to the door, there was no one there.”
I nodded in acknowledgement and continued to scan through the papers, passing each sheet to my right as I finished it and moved on to the next. We sat in silence until the last sheet had completed the circle and been placed on the neat stack by Kade’s elbow.
“Most of that we already knew,” I began, “but there are two things that concern me. One, the reference to using the hounds to trap and bind us, and two, the identity of the person who left the note.”
A murmur of general agreement came from those gathered around the table.
“Is it a coincidence that the note came the same night that we caught that Hunter kid on the property?” Sonny wondered.
I quirked a brow at Kade who shook his head.
“I don’t think it could have been him,” Kade disagreed. “By the time we found the papers, the kid was already in custody.”
“What if they were delivered earlier than you think and the doorbell was just a coincidence?” Colby suggested.
“I guess it’s possible,” Kade said unconvincingly. “I mean, lots of weird shit happens, you know? Maybe we should question him, but I really don’t think it was him.”
“I understand,” I said. “Honestly, I’m inclined to agree with you, but I think I’ll still go talk to him. In the meantime, who wants to head up the new canine conundrum taskforce and figure out what to do about those damn hounds?”
Surprisingly, it was Pete’s hand that shot up in the air, an evil grin just beneath his twitching nose. “I have a plan.”
