Page 17 of The Enforcers: NOAH

Back in his room, he took a long, scalding hot shower.

This whole Mina thing was crazy. He shouldn’t be getting involved with a human woman and her problems, no matter how she made him feel.

But he was so fucking sick and tired of feeling like shit. Mina’s eyes, her smile, her scent, her touch—she made him feel like less of a loser just by standing next to him. He couldn’t even imagine how much better he would feel if he was in her arms.

Which would probably never happen. Hell, it shouldn’t happen. But maybe if it could, if he could just be with her a little while and help her get her son back, he would start to heal.

Life owed Mina Reston a little happiness. So did Noah.

Noah sat down at the desk, fired up his laptop and logged into his cloud account to find Mina’s files. Then he paged through his phone contacts until he found the one he wanted.

An old buddy from the service who’d joined the Enforcers at the same time Noah had.

Drake picked up on the second ring. It was only about ten-thirty on the west coast, so probably not too late to call. “Hey, man, is this a bad time?” Noah asked.

“Hell, no,” Drake said. “Man, it’s good to hear your voice! How you doing?”

His voice got the same careful tone everyone’s did now, when they asked him how he was. Like they were afraid he was actually going to tell them how fucked-up he was, which they didn’t want to know, but they still wanted to show they cared.

It didn’t bother him quite so much as it usually did.

“Better,” he said. “A lot better.”

“Good, good.” Drake’s voice was a little too hearty. Noah knew how he felt. He’d felt the same way when he talked to buddies who’d been wounded really bad, mentally or physically. Sorry for them. Hoping they were okay. Grateful as hell it wasn’t him.

Now it was him, and it sucked to be on the other end.

“Yeah,” he said. “Listen, can you do me a favor on the downlow?”

“If I can,” Drake said.

“Nothing classified. I don’t think,” he said. If it was, he’d have to go through somebody else. “But I ran across mention of an incident from about five years ago, in Alaska. I wanted to know if it was shifter-related and if it was, what happened.”

He gave Drake the rundown, and then added, “And there’s some associated names—I want to know if they’re on the Council’s radar at all. Aramina Reston, Justin Adams, Robert Wells. And Briscoe Johnson,” he added as an afterthought.

“I’ll check it out,” Drake promised. “Anything you can share about why you want to know?”

“I ran into Wells here in Nashville,” he said, not wanting to bring Mina into the conversation. “And there’s something off about him. It’s not something I can bring up officially yet—I’ve got nothing on him. I just wanted some background.”

“You got it,” Drake said. “And Reilly—you sound good, man.”

“I am good,” he said.

He hung up the phone and looked at it sitting in his hand. He wasn’t good—not really. He was still fucked up. Maybe he always would be.

But even so, maybe he could still do a little bit of good in the world.

He pulled up the documents he’d gotten from Mina’s computer, and started making notes. First he had to know all about Mina. Then he had to find all the reasons why a judge should take her kid away from his asshole of a father, and give him back to his mother where he belonged.