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“I will if you promise to have someone competent make the next pot.” I smirked, trying to keep things nice and light. The better we all got along, the easier this would be.
“I made that pot.”
So much for charming him. But there was no backing down now. Cops loved good-natured ribbing right? “You do know you’re supposed to use water to brew it, right? Not battery acid.”
“We all need something to get us through the day.”
Ben groaned next to me. “If you two are done flirting, could we get on with things?”
I kicked him under the table.
Unmoved by Ben’s statement, Wilder said, “If you think that’s how she flirts, you are sorely mistaken.”
I blushed. Detective Perry held back a chuckle. Ben rolled his eyes. “I’m in hell.”
“Then maybe you should have stayed home,” I whispered.
He had no quippy response for that.
Good.
Perry charged ahead, pretending the entire exchange hadn’t happened. “Look, this arrangement is a little unusual, I’ll admit, but I think we can all help each other, if we’re willing to be fair about it.”
“Fair how?” I asked.
The question seemed to perplex him because he looked at me briefly like I might not have all my mental capacities. “Sorry?”
“I mean, you say you want to be fair, but how do you see this working? We’ve asked our lawyers to sit this out for the time being, giving you access to our pack members, but by doing that I’m asking two innocent men to waive their Miranda rights. You, on the other hand, are just letting me peek over your shoulder while you work, and you get to question my boys without interference. I want to know what you’re going to do for us that makes this so fair.”
The men flanking me had gone silent—a rarity for both of them—and Detective Perry had one ginger brow arched, clearly taking in a side of me he hadn’t known existed.
Yeah, that’s right, guys, I can talk like a goddamn boss bitch.
“Well.” Perry tapped a pen on the file folders in front of him, then took a small drink of his coffee. He had cultivated a much better poker face when it came to drinking the stuff. That or he actually liked the way he made it. I wasn’t sure which was more impressive. “What if I gave you unlimited access to our case files on this and allowed you to sit in on all interviews pertaining to the case?” Perry lifted his pen to stop me, seeing that I wanted to jump into the conversation. “Just you. And observing onl
y. You don’t get to play junior detective. You don’t get to conduct the interviews or interrogations. I will bring you on as an official consultant for this case and this case alone, which means we’ll treat you like a member of the team and not someone opposing it.”
I eyed the neat stack of folders in front of him, desperate to flip through them. I was equally eager to get in a room with Emmett and Mason and make sure they knew not to behave like idiots. A lot of young werewolves didn’t respect human authority figures because police weren’t pack, and the only law they tended to consider important was pack law.
If I could make them understand pack law and human law were the same thing in this one instance, we might be able to come out of this largely unscathed.
Giving me more time and energy to focus on the other shitshow I was dealing with right now.
Too bad I couldn’t kill two birds with one stone and get the police to assist me with the problems at the Delta Phi house. A couple hours earlier when I’d only known a girl was missing, this problem had the NOPD’s name all over it. Now I knew this was much too serious for the police, and probably too big for me. But I’d gone and gotten involved, which meant I had to see things through.
I heaved a grouchy sigh, which everyone in the room seemed to think meant I didn’t like what Detective Perry was offering. They all waited patiently for me to reply. I glanced at Ben, who appeared almost apoplectic with worry that I’d fuck up his arrangement with the captain. I don’t know what he was so gung-ho about. Perry had clearly said I was the only one who got to play cop for the duration of the case.
Wilder showed no outward signs of caring about this situation one way or the other. Classic Wilder, managing to act like he was above it all, loftily observing. I had learned a few things about him in our short time together that told me otherwise, though, and even though he played it cool, I knew this mattered to him because it mattered to me.
There were layers and layers to him I was only starting to unravel, and I genuinely believed I might go my whole life without ever fully understanding the inner workings of Wilder Shaw.
He caught me looking at him and gave me a soft It’s all good smile, which could be the truth, or maybe he was trying to make me feel better.
Who knew?
I resisted the urge to put my hand on his thigh, recalling how quickly things had gone from zero to horny in the car before we came inside.
Taking a breath to steady myself and get centered in Alpha mode, I said, “Detective Perry, I want a personal assurance from you that you won’t use this as an opportunity to turn your case into a werewolf witch-hunt.” Yes, I knew how ridiculous it was for me to say werewolf witch in a sentence. “With the pack, our word is our bond, and when we make a promise, it is not something we take lightly. So I am promising you I will do everything in my power to help you catch the person who did this. That is, providing you will promise to help me keep my pack’s name out of the press.”
