“The husband…?” I asked around my last bite of chicken.
“Human, as far as I know. He’s not registered with the Pride, nor does he appear in any of our records as a known rogue.”
There was an awful lot of paperwork involved in running the first stray Pride.Maybe Ishoulddownload that damn app.
“Any record of her withdrawing cash?”
“No idea,” Tucker said. “Nor am I sure how to find out, without either hacking into her bank or becoming a cop in that jurisdiction and applying for a warrant.”
“Or interviewing her friends and family,” Davey piped up from behind me.
“And it may come to that,” I acknowledged. “Okay, Vance, what did you find?”
“Brittany Walsh. She was thirty-two when she died last year, so on the upper end of the age range. Similar symptoms, according to a sister who set up a crowd-source page to help pay for her treatment. Which wound up paying for her funeral. She was in the hospital for three days, though, before she died. It was a rural hospital in eastern Tennessee. They never figured out what she had.”
Eastern Tennessee. “That’s not our Pride, Vance.”
He shrugged. “I expanded the search. If we’re looking for some kind of serial offender, what are the chances that he—or they—would stick to one territory?”
“Slim to none,” Davey said, before I could even open my mouth. “Concentrating his victims in one spot would make him more likely to get caught.”
“Davey!” I snapped. “You have a stake in the bar, not in the Pride!”
Vance shrugged. “She’s not wrong.”
“Iknowshe’s not wrong. But she doesn’t work for Titus, and she isn’t supposed to know about any of this. And we don’t have access to information from the Appalachian Pride.”
“Wasn’t that Jace’s territory?” Davey lifted the bar flap and came into the dining area. “Before he joined this one? Or…he founded this Pride, right? With Titus?”
“Someone’s done her homework,” Vance said with a smile.
I growled softly. “This isnother homework.”
Davey pulled a chair up to the end of our booth and snatched the last chicken strip from Tucker’s plate with a grin. “I’m right though. Right? So, Jace might still have contacts he can ask?”
Vance nodded. “He might—”
“Hedoes,” I interrupted. “But if he uses those contacts, then his brother-in-law, who’s the Appalachian Alpha, will want to know why we need information about dead human women with infection-like symptoms. Which means the entire territorial council will know. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to avoid. At least until we have a bad guy to hand over.”
“You’re going to hand him over?” Davey asked with her mouth full. “Because I think Bishop Mattheson will object to that.”
“We won’t literally hand him over,” I conceded. “We’ll just be handing over a name or names, assuming we find the aforementioned bad guy or guys in our territory.”
“But we’ll bereallyfucked if he’s moved on,” Tucker added.
I leaned around Vance to glare at my sister. “Now, will youpleasego open the bar and let us get done here?”
Davey stood with a groan, which only grew louder when I handed her my dirty plate.
“Okay, anything else I should know about this Brittany Walsh?” I asked, as Davey took my plate into the kitchen.
Vance slid a sheet of paper toward me. “Not that I know of. She was married with one child. A four-year old. No sign that her husband was a shifter, but Jace may know more about that.”
“Okay, I’ll ask him if any of his former Pride members are named Walsh. It’s highly unlikely that her husband was a stray, since they’re rarely allowed to join Prides.”
“Except this one!” Davey announced as the kitchen doors swung open again behind me.
“Except this one.” Vance smiled.
