“Nobody took him,” Alphonse said, looking at Stef with desperate appeal. “Ethan, he’s a joker, he likes to play games. And he was mad at his father,” he added defensively. “He didn’t want to come out here in the first place, he wanted to go to his friend’s birthday party, and he was sulking the whole way up here.”
Michael let out a snarl of rage and slammed his fist down so hard that his chair arm broke. Alphonse seemed to shrink in on himself, going very still as Michael’s jaw lengthened and his enormous fangs shot out.
“Is that true?” Stef demanded.
“Yeshhh,” Michael said, the words coming out slurred. He shook himself and his jaw went back to normal.
“Yes,” he repeated. “Ethan was annoyed. But I know my boy, and Ethan would never, ever do anything like this to me. And his scent trail vanishing? How would he have pulled that off?”
Blake’s gaze drifted over to the two guards.
“Why did you run?” he asked.
“Because we knew that Mr. Coffman would blame us for what happened.” Alphonse’s voice was whiny and defensive.
And they were hiding something.
"Take off your shades,” Blake snapped.
When they just set their jaws mutinously, Coffman gave a low growl. It was quiet and subtle, but it sent a ripple of power through the room. The two guards obeyed, folding up the sunglasses and tucking them into their breast pockets.
Alphonse had a nasty gash on his cheekbone. Richard had a massive purple-and-yellow shiner that made him look like a lopsided, technicolor panda.
“Did you do that to them?” he asked Michael, who shook his head.
“When I deal with them, it’s not going to be with some sissy bitch-slap.” His voice rumbled up from his chest, and his eyes glowed like liquid gold.
Both men swallowed hard.
“We were injured when we went looking for Ethan,” Alphonse one muttered. “Running through the woods.”
“Horseshit. You would have shifted to search for him, so you wouldn’t have injured yourself like that. That’s from a fist-fight. Tell me what happened,” Blake commanded, and the Tweedle-dumber must have been ex-services because Blake’s tone of voice reached straight down his spine and pulled the lever marked “superior officer”. He rattled into a shame-faced report.
Michael Coffman’s face flushed with fury as they spoke, and his cruel cat’s claws curved out of his fingertips.
Seemed they’d left out a few details when they talked to Michael after his son first went missing. It turned out that the two guards had gotten bored enough with their babysitting gig to accept a flask offered by some lady who’d come strolling up to them. Out there in the middle of nowhere.
Defensively, Roger muttered that they didn’t want to insult a local by rejecting her hospitality. He was fooling nobody. It was clear that the “lady” in question had been a hot ticket, probably flashing her cleavage and fluttering her lashes, and the big dumb bozos hadn’t stopped to ask themselves why she was fawning all over them.
But after finishing the contents of the flask, they’d found themselves feeling… off. Snappish and ill-tempered. For some reason, they started arguing, but they couldn’t remember what the argument was about. A spat had turned into pushing and shoving, then punches, and then fur flying. And when they came to their senses, Ethan and the woman were gone.
“And my head still hurts,” Roger complained.
“Not as much as you’re going to hurt when I’ve finished with you,” Coffman promised in a low, deadly voice, and Blake saw Krista suppress a little shiver as the power in his voice washed through the room. He didn’t envy the bodyguards, either.
“Describe her,” Krista said to them. “The woman with the flask.”
They glanced at each other nervously. “Umm… straight blonde hair,” Roger said, and Alfonse nodded. “But it kind of looked like a wig. Caucasian. Maybe in her twenties.” He glanced at Michael, sweat beading on his forehead. “Wearing jeans. I don’t remember much else.”
“Skinny, fat? Tall, short? Eye color? Human, shifter?”
They both just stared at him.
Dexter spoke up. “She had a hot body and a pretty face. Right?”
The bodyguard nodded miserably. “I think so.” Michael turned his attention to Krista.
“They said you were an insider. Does that sound like anyone you know?”
Krista winced, and she hugged herself. “Unfortunately, that’s pretty vague. I mean, I can tell you it obviously wasn’t Dawnie and it doesn’t sound like her daughter Eva-Jo. Eva-Jo’s the opposite of seductive. Other than that, there are plenty of pretty young girls in Flowering Dogwood, and if she was wearing a wig, that makes it even harder.” Her voice softened. “I’m sorry, Mr. Coffman. I’ll do everything I can to help.” She slumped back in her chair, looking glum.
Michael wanted to stay for the rest of the debriefing, which was natural enough. He was frantic about his kid and desperate for any scrap of information, but Stef was firm—Shifters, Inc. would do everything in their power to return Ethan to his father alive and unharmed, but they had to be allowed to operate independently. A father’s love for his son could only lead to clouded judgement and hasty decisions that could put the whole operation at risk.
Eventually, he relented and left, along with his security team. The two morons who’d lost track of Ethan were as pale as death as they slouched out the front door like condemned men marching to their execution.
