In their defense, they didn’t seem to think he’d been the one who’d poisoned the city. But he was named on that damned sign-in page, so he was involved somehow, and they wanted to know why. He gave them everything he could, including Raoul Wolf. He just didn’t speak about people changing into animals. Or that he’d slept with one of the lead suspects.
Then the door opened, and his captain walked in. Ah, shit. Ryan had watched the man talk to suspects. He had a way of cutting a person open so that his or her secrets were exposed. He did not relish being on the receiving end of one of Captain Abraham’s interrogations.
He sighed and looked up. “Ready to cut me loose?” he asked. It was a vain hope, but he had to give it a shot.
The older man smiled as if Ryan had just made a joke and then passed him a water bottle. “You look like shit.”
“It’s the coffee.”
“Don’t think so.” His eyes narrowed as he studied Ryan. He’d been Ryan’s mentor since the day he’d stepped into the gang department, and Ryan hated lying to the man who had taught him the ropes and showed him just how to gain people’s trust. It was by talking honestly, heart to heart with people. And that’s what he did now. “You on something?”
Ryan nodded. “Drank the water. It’s made me…” He shrugged. “Reckless, I think.”
“You were the one warning us about the water. How’d you forget?”
He sighed. He’d gone over this with the other guys. “I figured out about the water afterwards.” He wiped his hand across his forehead and was ashamed at the sweat that had beaded there. “This is withdrawal.”
“Are you in a relationship with Frankie Wolf?”
Hell if he knew. Had last night been a one-time moment of playing house? Or a prelude to something more? “What does she say?”
“Nothing. We haven’t found her yet.”
Ryan controlled his reaction. He knew she’d skipped from the crime scene, but he’d held out a silly hope that she’d come back. She’d declared to one and all that she was his “friend” inside the storage room. But then when he needed her to corroborate his statement, she was in the wind. She’d abandoned him, and damn his heart for hurting from that. She’d never made any promises to him. Her loyalty was to her pack and he was a bear.
And yet her disappearance cut him deeply. She’d declared them friends and then bailed.
She was probably confronting her brother. Or at least trying to stop her father from going to war with the Griz. But both of those paths were suicide without backup. He could have helped her, but she hadn’t stuck around long enough to see that.
Meanwhile, Captain Abraham held up his phone and read off the screen. “The Wolves aren’t a gang in the traditional sense. They’re a powerful family trying to build a community. Francesca is the force behind those efforts. Emory is the glad-handing mayor, and Raoul the quiet nerd. She is the power behind the throne and our efforts should focus on her.” Captain Abraham looked up from his phone. “Remember when you wrote that?”
Ryan nodded. It was part of his report on the shifter “gangs” in Detroit, though no one in the department knew they were shifters.
“Were you seeing her then?”
“No.”
“But you tracked her, watched her, knew what she was up to.”
“That was my job.”
“And you do throw yourself a hundred percent into your job,” he drawled.
Ryan didn’t like his captain’s tone, nor did he appreciate the sleazy inference the man was making. He hadn’t written that report because of some relationship with Frankie. He’d done it because it was the truth. And because he was the only one on the force who could track the shifters in Detroit and who knew exactly what each species was up to. It had nothing to do with a relationship then or now.
“I’m just trying to find the asshole responsible for the Detroit Flu.”
Abraham nodded, his expression compassionate. But when he spoke, his words were anything but kind. Still, his tone was gentle, and that made it a hundred times worse.
“Interesting that you say ‘asshole’ in the singular. Like one person could have pulled off poisoning an entire city.”
It was possible given werewolf pack structure. He just hadn’t figured out if it was Emory or Raoul who was the ultimate culprit.
“Want to know what I think happened?” Abraham asked. Ryan didn’t, but he was about to hear anyway. “I think you were getting close to figuring things out. I think you took sick time in order to do some private investigating, and that led you to Frankie Wolf.”
“She came to me,” he said. In fact, she’d saved his life.
“I’ll just bet she did. She probably spun this whole damsel-in-distress tale and how she needs your help to expose Raoul.”
