“But it won’t,” Tanner added, “which sucks, because my beast wants to do the same and so do I. He took everything from Candrin.”
“Not everything,” I reminded them. “He has and always will have us.”
“Do you think he’d even know about us if it weren’t for Charles?” Oberon asked.
It was a question I’d spent a lot of time pondering. Candrin was ours and we were his. I didn’t think fate was so cruel as to not put us on paths that were destined to cross. Maybe it wouldn’t have been at the same time, but we’d have met and fallen in love eventually. That was the way it was meant to be.
“Yes,” I spoke with surety.
“Same,” Tanner agreed. “He’s ours and we are his and that’s why we have to fix the wrong done to him. Having this hanging over his head isn’t good for him. And he may try to convince himself that he’s moving on, but it blankets him like a shadow.”
“So what do we do? We can’t just maul Charles.” I glanced at each of my brothers hoping they had a better plan than I did, mine being to talk to my brothers to form a plan.
“What do we know about Charles? What do we really know?” Tanner asked.
“Just that he stole everything away from our mate.” Oberon’s bear was far too close to the surface even after our recent shift. What a good mate Oberon was.
“Exactly. We don’t know for sure where he came from or how he managed to pull this off. Shit, we don’t even know if Charles is his real name. He could be Kent from Mapleville for all we know.” I pressed the heel of my hand into my eye, needing to relieve the pressure building there.
The not knowing was the most frustrating part. Sure, the faker and thief proved they were related with a DNA test, but whowas to say that the DNA test wasn’t faked or the results altered? They couldn’t be accurate, that was for sure. Charles was a conman. There was zero doubt about that.
If we knew who he was and how he accomplished all that he had, we could undo the damage he caused and put his ass behind bars.
“We need to do like they do on television when someone feels off.” Oberon took out his phone and started to type away and then set it down, face up on the table. “We need to hire a private investigator.”
I glanced down at the phone to see he’d pulled up a list of them.
“You’re forgetting something very important,” I reminded him. “We’re not rich. We can’t just come up with thousands of dollars to pay the guy.”
If only we could. It was by far the best option and one I’d already investigated. Heck, I even started to save money for one. Only thing was, that the little bit I managed to put away wasn’t quite enough for the retainer of the low end detectives, much less a really good one.
“I have some money,” Tanner grabbed the back of his neck. “I was saving for a newcar for when mine finally shits the bed, but I can hold off. It’s not like I can’t take a bus to the airport. It would suck, but having our mate in this predicament sucks worse.”
Oberon tapped his phone and turned it around to show a couple of thousand dollars. “This is my CD. It’s not much and I’ll lose all of the interest when I take it out early, but we can use it for sure.”
I didn’t have any random CD’s or even savings, but I did have a retirement plan I could tap into. I’d have to see how it worked, but more than one of my coworkers had done it and I knew it was possible.
“I have some money I can access.”
They didn’t need to know where it came from. It would only have them worrying and we all had enough to worry about without adding one of us to the mix. I’d figure out therepaying it and making sure my future was solidthing later. And really, how could it be solid without doing all I could for my mate? At least that was how I was justifying it to myself.
“That gives us enough for a retainer. Not a huge one, but enough to get things rolling,” Oberon said.
“Charles is cocky, that usually goes hand in hand with carelessness.” Or at least, that was my theory. “If wehire the right guy, he can probably figure out how Charles managed to do what he did easily enough.”
We spent an hour making a list of which detectives to call and discuss the case with and went on our own way to get the money side of it in order. It didn’t take me long on my retirement website to figure out how to borrow against what I’d already put aside. It wasn’t as much as I had thought it would be, but it was something.
I filled out all of the paperwork and submitted it. It still needed to be approved before the funds could be moved, but it was a step in the right direction and that was a start. We reconvened to let each other know the totals we were able to piece together and it was pretty solid.
“Now what?” Tanner asked.
“Now we make our mate a special dinner. He’s going to need it after the long day he’s having,” I said.
And the truth was, we needed the distraction from Charles, the money, and the PI we were about to hire. A nice home cooked meal with our mate would do that nicely.
31
CANDRIN
