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Guess we weren’t using first names anymore. Which meant this was more serious than I’d anticipated. Goody. “Why were they arrested?”
Mason spoke this time. “There was a fight, Genie. Some guys got in our face. You know how it can get.”
There was a reason my uncle maintained a bar on his own property in St. Francisville. Liquor and emotions were an explosive cocktail that almost never ended favorably.
I could picture the scene without much effort. A bunch of rowdy drunks throwing slurs at my wolves, and the boys responding with anger. No werewolf in history had yet learned to turn the other cheek when being confronted. Standing down against weaker creatures wasn’t in our nature.
“What. Happened?”
Now it was Emmett’s turn, but he continued to stare at the table as he spoke. “There was a fight.” Mason had already told me this much. So had Mags.
“And?”
“And when it was over, someone was dead.”
Chapter Three
“Elaborate.” Even though I’d expected this on some level, my blood still went cold the second the words were out of Emmett’s mouth.
I’d heard him just fine, but I was hoping I’d misunderstood.
“Someone ended up dead.”
He was being extra careful with his phrasing, and he glanced over at Detective Perry after he said it, as if to confirm he hadn’t been misheard. He wasn’t saying we killed someone.
I wanted to ask. I needed to know. They were mine, my responsibility. Whatever they did fell on my shoulders. If they had killed someone—intentionally or not—this was going to be a disaster of epic proportions.
It sank in, then, why the reporters weren’t here yet, and no charges had been laid. Perry and the rest of the force didn’t want to deal with the three-ring media circus this would become if the press got wind of what had happened here. As of right now, no one in the outside world knew werewolves were connected to this death.
I prayed I might be able to keep it that way.
Mentally I was already creating a list of requirements. A lawyer, obviously. Callum had several on retainer, so it shouldn’t be hard to call one up. The problem was they would immediately tell Callum the situation. Not in a way that would break confidentiality. More like, “Hello, Mr. McQueen, your niece has requested our services in New Orleans.”
Then I’d be the one stuck explaining the nitty-gritty.
Sucks to be me.
The boys had to get a lawyer because I needed someone who could speak to them privately without the cops listening in.
“Ask for council,” I said between gritted teeth. I’d been gripping the table so hard there were impressions of my fingers pressed into the wooden surface.
Mason looked confused, but Emmett got the message loud and clear. He cleared his throat and said, “I’d like a lawyer, please.”
Detective Perry gave me an exhausted, unimpressed glare. Clearly he’d been hoping I might make them slip up or that when they saw me, the boys would confess on the spot. I’d liked Perry right up until that moment.
Sure, he had a job to do. But protecting these idiots was my life.
“All right.” He pushed himself
off the wall by the door, and I slipped a business card out of my wallet, holding it up for him.
In the meantime I stared at Emmett and Mason in absolute silence. Neither of them looked up.
It was a far cry from my first meeting with them a month ago. I’d been making the rounds to formally introduce myself to the local pack, and sat down with these two, both sons of prominent, long-lineage Southern pack members. Their parents knew my uncle well. The guys had grown up knowing Ben, but not me.
They respected Ben.
I wasn’t what they wanted or expected in an Alpha, and they let it show during our first encounter, where they’d sneered and fake-bowed and refused to use my title.
