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He frowned, and then his gaze swept me. “How come your clothes are suddenly tatty? And how the hell did your hair change color?”
“Long story. Let’s get these back to Uncle Rhoan before he comes looking for us.”
I grabbed my purse and walked out. He was very quickly beside me. “You’re avoiding the question.”
“Too right.”
“Why? What are you hiding?”
“Secrets, of course.” I gave him a somewhat wry glance. “Secrets I’m not about to reveal to a reporter, let alone the one who besmirched my mom’s name.”
He was silent for a moment, then said slowly, “Nadler’s not the only one who’s a face-shifter, is he?”
I didn’t say anything. He grinned. “That’s it. That’s the secret. Or at least one of them. I suspect you have a whole lot more, because from what I understand of face-shifting, it doesn’t destroy clothes like shifting into wolf form can.”
“And you’ve talked to lots of face-shifters to confirm this, have you?” I asked.
“Ha. Confirmation of my guess. Where’d the skill come from—your mom?”
I glanced at him. “You’re the one who did the extensive background check on my mom. You tell me.”
He grimaced. “Pack background wasn’t something I could pin down. But if she was a face-shifter, she had to be a Helki. No other pack has that skill.”
“You know I’m not going to confirm or deny anything, so give it up.”
“And you know I won’t. I’m afraid you’ve become something of a challenge to me.”
I shook my head and pushed the gate open. Uncle Rhoan was just stepping around the side of the house. His gaze swept down and came to rest briefly on the disks I held before continuing on, taking in the state of my clothing. His gaze had narrowed by the time it met mine, but all he said was, “Any luck?”
“These disks are the ones Blake took on the day Nadler was married.” I slipped the smaller one into his hand, as well. “That last one could prove useful when it comes to looking for the current Nadler.”
He nodded and pocketed the disks. “Where are you two off to now?”
“What, now we have to report our every move to you?” Jak said.
“If you want to remain out of jail and on this case, yes,” Rhoan said, rather mildly considering the spark of annoyance that flared in his eyes.
I touched Jak’s arm, stopping him from saying anything else, and said, “Nadler’s lawyer was murdered last night. We might go talk to his secretary, and see if it was somehow connected to Nadler, or if he was working on anything else that might have warranted his death.”
Rhoan continued to eye me dubiously. He knew me well enough to understand that I was planning a whole lot more than that. “I don’t suppose you were at that fund-raiser last night, were you?”
“Yes. We found the body and called the cops, in fact.” There was no sense denying it, because he could easily enough trace the call back to my phone.
“And the murder? Did you also witness it?”
“We would have hung around if we had.”
His expression was somewhat disbelieving. “You should have hung around anyway.”
I grimaced. “I had somewhere else I had to be. I couldn’t.”
“Doesn’t explain why Jak didn’t hang around.”
Jak just shrugged. Truth be told, he was probably wondering why he hadn’t hung around also.
Rhoan grunted. It wasn’t a happy sound. “I won’t tell you not to talk to Logan’s secretary, because you’ll just go ahead and do it anyway. But I do expect you to keep me up-to-date with what—if anything—you discover. Because believe me, if I find out you’re keeping stuff back, I will throw your asses in jail until this is all over. And not even my sister will get you out of it.”
I knew an ultimatum when I heard one, so I simply nodded. He continued to eye me for several seconds, then stepped to one side and allowed us to pass.
