Brooks opened his mouth, then closed it again, speechless.
“And on that note, I’m out of here,” Remy said, mouth twitching as he made a beeline for the bullpen.
“We need to get moving,” Zane murmured, his tone reminding Brooks there was something more important than Connor’s sudden feline infatuation.
Brooks started to follow Zane out the door, but then a thought struck him. Of a particular pit bull mix walking into the place and finding a cat in her compound. “Have you even thought about the fact that we already have a Pack mascot? And that Tuffie and the cat might not get along?”
Connor glanced at the cat, who meowed at him. “They’ll get along fine. You worry too much.”
Brooks shook his head. “Right. Because it’s not like dogs and cats have ever not gotten along.”
As he and Zane crossed the parking lot, a brown four-door sedan pulled through the front gate and slipped into one of the reserved visitor spaces in front of the admin building. A moment later, Chief of Police Randy Curtis stepped out of the unmarked patrol car. As he approached them, Curtis’, gaze swept over Brooks, Zane, and everything else within view as if nothing quite measured up, including them. Brooks didn’t take it personally. Curtis disliked anyone and anything that had even the slightest chance of derailing his political ambitions.
“Corporal Kendrick. Corporal Brooks,” Curtis said, extending his hand.
Brooks didn’t have any choice but to shake it, though he felt greasy as hell afterward. Curtis may have been a cop before he came to Dallas to take over as chief, but since then, he’d turned into a politician. It was tough to like a man when you knew he viewed everything through the lens of what it meant for his own career.
“I heard you and your team did real good at that school shooting today,” Curtis said. “But I also heard that our gangbanger was a student there. Is this going to come back as a clean shoot?”
Brooks bit his tongue so he wouldn’t say anything he regretted. Curtis didn’t care in the slightest whether the students, teachers, and even officers on the scene were okay. Hell, he didn’t even care how badly the suspect had been injured. All he wanted to know was if anything negative was going to come back on him. That made sense, since Curtis made no secret of the fact that he was looking to make a run for mayor. The worst part was that most of the good press the man had gotten lately was because SWAT had taken down a lot of bad guys. Between organized crime figures, psycho killers, major drug dealers, and a corrupt councilman, SWAT had made a large dent in the Dallas crime statistics, and Curtis was taking credit for all of it. If he got elected mayor, it would probably be because of SWAT.
That was a horrible thought.
“There’s video and audio of the entire operation from start to finish.” Brooks glanced at Zane. “Officer Kendrick was the on-scene negotiator who tried to talk the suspect into giving himself up, but when the teen took a shot at one of the other students in the classroom, we had to go in. Officer Martinez entered through a window and tried to get him to drop the gun but was forced to take the shot when the suspect turned his weapon on the teacher.”
Curtis’s gray eyes narrowed the moment Brooks said the wordvideo, and his interest only increased when Brooks added details. When the chief turned his attention to Zane, Brooks could practically see the gears turning in the man’s head. “You’re the officer who was injured last month at the medical clinic, right?” When Zane gave him a reluctant nod, he continued. “Injured in the line of duty and already back out on the street trying to convince a gangbanger to give himself up. That’s good. Really good.”
Brooks didn’t think anything about the situation was really good. Neither did Zane. But they kept their opinions to themselves. It was obvious Curtis only cared about how the shooting would play out with the media.
“Where is Officer Martinez?” Curtis asked. “I’d like to get his perspective on the shooting. Maybe get him in front of the cameras at the press conference.”
“You’ll need to get in line, sir,” Zane said. “Detective Coletti from Internal Affairs is currently with him. Following normal DPD procedure, he’ll likely be placed on desk duty until the investigation is complete. He won’t be able to make any public statements during that time.”
While Brooks and the other guys hadn’t fired their weapons at the high school, they had at the warehouse, so Vince Coletti had talked to them as well. While the IA detective definitely still took his investigations seriously, he wasn’t nearly the asshole about it that he had been before falling for a beta werewolf who’d recently moved into the area.
“Of course. IA has their job to do,” Curtis said. “Where are the two of you headed? It would look good to have you both with me at the press conference I’m holding later.”
Brooks bit back a growl. Like hell they would be there. “We’d really like to, but we’re on our way to Coffield Unit. The suspect from the shooting at the medical center asked to talk to us. We’re hoping he might tell us who he was working with.”
Brooks expected Curtis to ask why SWAT would interrogate a murder suspect, since they didn’t normally investigate cases. But the man didn’t even blink an eye. “I understand. I believe there were several SWAT officers at the scene, so I’m sure Sergeant Dixon has someone he can give me for the press conference.”
Brooks sure as hell wasn’t going to volunteer anyone, even though he probably should have thrown Connor under the bus for bringing the cat back here. But he’d never do anything like that. None of his packmates liked being in front of a camera.
“Good luck down at the prison,” Curtis said. Giving them a nod, he headed toward the admin building.
Zane climbed behind the wheel of the SUV before Brooks could offer to drive. They hadn’t gone more than a mile before Zane looked his way with a quizzical expression.
“What’s the story behind you and the teacher you rescued?”
Brooks frowned. “What do you mean?”
Zane shrugged. “You seemed cross you couldn’t go see her.”
“Nah, man. I saved her life and just wanted to make sure she was okay.”
“Right.” Zane glanced at him. “So that’s not why you almost growled at Curtis just now? Or why you’ve been acting distracted as hell ever since the shooting? Or why you didn’t want to go down to Coffield with me?”
Brooks opened his mouth to say Zane was way off the mark but then snapped it closed again. He hated lying to a friend, especially when that friend was right. Selena had gotten into his head—fast.
