“Give me that,” snapped Rhys, grabbing the phone. He had no patience for this second-hand conversation.
“You’re at the fucking zoo?” he exclaimed.
“Hello to you, too,” sneered Michael. “I’m safe, thanks for asking. After we had to make an emergency dash through the streets after my home office got raided and trashed. Thanks tosomeone, who didn’t have the good sense to realize he was being tracked, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Rhys muttered, but he did feel a bit contrite. He’d be up shit creek without Michael and Shaz, and he knew it. He sighed. “Sorry. I really didn’t mean for you to get caught up in this mess. I take it you have a good reason for being at the zoo?”
“Of course I do,” Michael replied. “Shaz is taking cover at the cassowary enclosure, while I’ve been hanging out with the quokkas.”
“Of course,” Rhys said, biting his tongue to keep from yelling. There had to be more to it – Michael was an idiot, but a very particular type of idiot. In some ways, as much as Rhys hated to admit it, he was competent.
“I don’t expect someone like you to understand it,” Michael went on, “but the zoo is an excellent place to go when you don’t want to be found by whoever it was that raided my home office and trashed it. Did I mention that someone raided my home office and trashed it?”
“Yes, you did,” Rhys snapped, and resisted the temptation to add,How would you evenknowif someone trashed that filth-encrusted den?“And what do you mean,someone like me?”
But after a moment, he did get it. He was so used to keeping his griffin hidden that sometimes he forgot that other shifters could hide in plain sight. Even if theywerequokkas and cassowaries.
“We’re just laying low for a bit,” Michael said. “I’ve popped out and shifted occasionally so that I can call my contacts and keep track of what’s going on.”
Rhys was pretty sure that Michael had gotten around the whole ‘your clothes and anything in your pockets shifts with you’ part of being a shifter by getting Shaz to make him a jacket that stored at least three laptops and a series of chargers. The only other option was that he literally had electronics as part of his human form. The guy wasneverwithout a laptop, no matter how improbable the situation.
“They’re taking Maisie to the Hotel Silver,” he continued, and suddenly Rhys was all ears. “They’ve booked out the sixth floor.”
We will turn this Hotel Silver into a pile of rubble,his griffin screeched.There will be naught but ruins once we are done with it!
I’m not going to commit murder and mass property destruction if I can help it!Rhys snapped back.Besides, have you forgotten that Maisie is in there?!
After we have rescued her,his griffin said confidently, though Rhys could detect the slightest hint of embarrassment.
“Great, thanks,” Rhys said – and he meant it.
“Oh, and Aaron Merrett’s the one who’s been setting you up, by the way,” Michael added, almost as an afterthought.
Wait – what?!
“Could you repeat that?” Rhys asked, his voice catching slightly in his throat.
Aaron?! No. No way.
Not that he knew Aaron all that well, but he knew him well enough. He’d always been one of the good guys.
Or so he’d thought. There were a lot of things that Rhys had thought he’d known.
“What’s your source on this?” he demanded. “I need to know.”
“I’ll send you through some encrypted documents in a minute.” Michael hissed. “But do not–and I repeat,do notreveal where you got this. I sent everything aboutyouto Hector in the hope he’d come rescue your dumb arse, but I didn’t realize he was out of the country. But this stuff on Aaron Merrett I’ve sent to no one else. I really don’t need the Agency knowing I’ve been digging around in their shit. I’m passing it to you so you can get it where it needs to go, but if you ever tell anyone where it came from, I’m never doing you a favor ever again, you got it? You can just pay for your Netflix subscription and your luxury hotel rooms and first-class flights. Understood?”
“I never asked you to do any of that stuff in the first place,” Rhys hissed back, keenly aware of both Euan and Trent’s eyes upon him while Michael made him out to be some kind of freeloading scammer.
“You still took the holiday, didn’t you?” Michael snapped, before muttering, “Shit. There’s a tour group coming. I’ve got to shift back.”
“Wait!” Rhys said. “You’re in the enclosure? You’re, what – just hiding behind a bush?!”
“I’d like to see you do better, griffin boy,” Michael sneered, and hung up.
Rhys stared at the phone for a long second, trying to take everything in. Maisie was being taken to a hotel in Townsville for interrogation. Michael was in a quokka enclosure at the zoo, performing for tourists. Aaron was… a traitor?
He turned to the others. “Did you catch all that? he asked, still in disbelief.
