Page 39 of A Dash of Wolf

He ran his hand over his face. No. He didn’t believe that. He couldn’t believe that...because if he did, then every conversation they’d had—the stakeout, the kiss—was a lie. And deep down, his wolf knew it wasn’t a lie. His wolf had known from the first time he’d caught her scent that she was something different. Something real.

But real didn’t mean she hadn’t hurt him.

“I guess some of this is on me,” he said quietly, “for not asking about the hours at the assisted-living facility.”

Mrs. Abernathy waved a hand. “Oh, don’t blame yourself, dear. I’ve been sneaking out of that place for years. The night staff thinks I sleep like the dead.” She waggled her eyebrows. “I don’t.”

He gave her a small smile before glancing at Adeline and then pushing back his chair and standing. His legs and heart felt heavy. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you, Mrs. Abernathy.” He heard his own voice like it was coming from somewhere far away. “Please understand. I don’t want to.” He looked at Adeline and held her gaze. He let her see exactly what he was feeling because he was too tired and too hurt to hide it. “But sometimes we have to do what we don’t want to do. No matter how much it hurts.”

“You can’t arrest her!” Adeline exclaimed. “She only did what she did to help the squish-squids and the marsh! How can you do this to her? She’s ninety-seven years old, Mason!”

“Now, Adeline,” Mrs. Abernathy said calmly, patting the air with both hands. “It’s okay. He has a job to do.”

“Yes, I do.” Mason heard the edge in his own voice, and he hated that. He didn’t want to hear her accusations. He didn’t want to hear her tell him all the ways he was wrong. It was bad enough that his chest felt like someone had reached in and squeezed his heart. “Go back to your bakery, Adeline. I’ll handle the law side of things from here on out.”

The words came out harder than he’d intended, but he couldn’t take them back now. She stood there, fists clenched, face pale. And damn her for staring him down. Why couldn’t she just go away and let him do his job?

“Come on, Adeline,” Princess Muffin Top said quietly, jumping down from the chair. “You heard the werewolf. He doesn’t want us here.” The Main Coon stopped in front of Mrs. Abernathy. “Don’t worry, Mrs. A. I’ll break you out soon.” She glanced toward the holding cell. “And there’s a file under the cot if you don’t want to wait for me.”

Then Princess Muffin Top turned and looked at him. She didn’t say anything. She just stared at him with those large, unblinking cat eyes. Usually she was full of snark and sarcasm and relentless commentary. But now she was silent as she stared at him.

It was the most unnerving thing the cat had done to him so far. He thought the singing was bad…no, the silence was worse.

“You don’t have to do this, Mason.” His heart lurched at the plea in Adeline’s voice. “We can think of something. There has to be another way. Please!”

He pulled out the ink pad and the fingerprint card and set them on the desk. He looked away because he couldn’t bring himself to look at Adeline any longer. If he did, he’d break. He’d give in. He’d do whatever she asked because that’s what she did to him...she made him want to bend every rule he’d ever followed.

And he couldn’t bend this one. Not this time. He kept his head down and focused on the ink pad and paper, lining them up just so on the desk. A few seconds later, he heard the front door slam shut. The sound echoed through the station and hit him like a fist to his gut. He sighed and sat down across from Mrs. Abernathy and slid the ink pad toward her. “If you could press your right thumb here, please.”

Mrs. Abernathy obliged without complaint. She pressed her thumb onto the pad, then onto the card, then looked up at him with those clear, sharp eyes. “She didn’t know for long, you know. She only figured it out tonight. After she confronted me, she said we had to come straight to you.”

Mason said nothing. He labeled the card and set it aside.

“She came straight to you,” Mrs. Abernathy repeated. “When she could have kept it to herself. When she could have protected me and let you keep chasing your tail. She chose you, Chief Wolfe. She chose honesty over loyalty to me.” The old witch tilted her head. “That should tell you something.”

Mason’s jaw tightened. He pulled out the booking form and started filling in the blanks.

“And another thing,” Mrs. Abernathy continued, because apparently ninety-seven-year-old witches who knitted sweaters for squish-squids couldn’t read the room. “Don’t let anger and hurt cloud your judgment, dear. What you’re really feeling is love. You just don’t know how to express it.” She reached over and patted his hand, leaving ink on his tanned skin. “But I have faith in you.”

He stopped writing. His pen hovered over the form. He stared at the ink on his hand and then at the lines on the page. “I’ll contact the prosecuting attorney in the morning. You’ll spend the night here, but I’ll make sure you’re comfortable.”

“I’m sure I will be,” Mrs. Abernathy said pleasantly. “I’ve heard a lot about that cot over the years.”

He led her to the holding cell...the same holding cell that had imprisoned Princess Muffin Top three times this week, the same cot Princess Muffin Top had serenaded the station from, the same four walls that had witnessed more chaos in the past five days than most small-town stations saw in a year, he was sure. And again his heart and stomach both felt like he’d been hit with an iron fist.

Mrs. Abernathy settled onto the cot, set her purse beside her, and pulled out a paperback romance novel. “Goodnight, Chief. Try not to brood and worry too much. It gives you wrinkles.”

Mason chuckled as he closed the cell door. The clank of the lock making him wince. He walked back to his front-station desk and sat down. The station was quiet. Mrs. Abernathy wouldn’t be serenading him while she was locked behind bars. The ink pad was still open, and Mrs. Abernathy’s thumbprint was still drying on the card.

He withdrew his cell phone. No messages from Adeline. Not that he should have been shocked. He’d have been shocked if she had left him a message or a text. He closed his eyes and groaned. How could he have messed things up so badly? Just a few hours ago he stood in her bakery and kissed her...again. He was sure she felt the same way about him as he felt about her.

Mrs. Abernathy’s words rang through his head. She’d come straight to him. She’d figured it out, and she’d come straight to him. Mrs. Abernathy was right, Adeline could have kept it to herself. She could have protected the old witch. Could have let him keep looking in the wrong direction. But she hadn’t. She’d walked into his station and told him the truth, knowing it would cost her.

And he’d told her to go back to her bakery.

Mason leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. The hurt was still there...real and heavy and lodged somewhere between his ribs and heart. But he wasn’t angry, just disappointed. In himself. In the situation. In the fact that the first good thing he’d had in over a decade was sitting in a Volkswagen bus somewhere on Tide Street, probably just as upset because he’d been too proud and too hurt to say what he should have said…which was, “Thank you for coming and telling me.”

Mason picked up his cell phone again. He typed two words. Deleted them. Typed them again. Deleted them again.