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The healer wore his default half-smile, his face and posture as open as usual. It was only when he took in the others’ expressions that a line dented his brow. “Is everything okay?”
“Yes, fine,” Tate told him, his voice carefully neutral. “We just need to speak to you about something. Have a seat.”
“Okay.” Sam gingerly perched himself on the opposite end of the sofa from Deke. “What’s going on?”
Tate folded his arms, his body language relaxed rather than confrontational, but his sober gaze telling the healer he meant business. “Where were you yesterday at noon?”
Sam blinked. “Um, having lunch at a café about half an hour’s drive from here,” he easily replied. “Why?”
Tate’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Were you alone?”
“Yes. I would have had Cassandra with me, but she was busy.”
The Alpha cast Deke a the floor is yours look.
Deke turned to Sam. “I had a visitor today. Someone who says you were supposed to meet them at the café yesterday.”
Sam frowned. “What?”
“According to them, you called them and requested that they be there,” Deke added, watching him closely.
Sam’s back snapped straight. “That’s a load of crap. I wasn’t there to see anyone. I always go to that particular café on Wednesdays, and I always eat alone.”
Luke stirred in his armchair. “This is a routine thing for you?”
Sam nodded hard. “I go to visit my human aunt and then stop off at the café on my way home—she used to own it, so I like to go there.” He swept his gaze over everyone in the room. “Who the hell is claiming I wanted to meet them?”
Deke dug his tongue into the tip of his canine tooth. “Remember how your name was used to create one of the fake profiles of me?”
“Yes,” the healer replied. “Tate asked me about it. I told him that it wasn’t me.”
“This person contacted one of the women he’d been ‘dating’ while posing as me,” Deke went on. “He asked her to meet him at noon the previous day at that café; told her he’d be sat at the corner table near the restrooms. She took a picture of him and brought it to me to see if I recognized him.” Deke paused. “It was a photo of you.”
Sam shook his head hard. “I was at the café, yes, but I did not arrange to meet her or anyone else.”
“Do you always eat at that particular table?” Blair asked from where she was perched on the armrest of Luke’s chair.
Sam gave a sheepish shrug, his cheeks going pink. “Yes. I used to sit there as a kid with my mom when we’d go there together, so I like to eat at that table.” He cut his gaze back to Tate. “I swear to you, it was not me who contacted the human; I had nothing to do with the fake profiles.” His eyes lit as he clicked his fingers. “Talk to Cassandra. I invited her to come with me yesterday morning, but she couldn’t make it. If I’d planned to meet anyone else, I wouldn’t have done that, would I?”
Tate bit the inside of his cheek, saying nothing for long moments, his eyes raking over the healer’s face. “Thank you for answering our questions,” he finally said. “You can go.”
Sam blinked, seeming surprised that he’d been so easily dismissed. He slowly stood, swallowing hard, and then mumbled goodbyes before leaving.
Deke exhaled heavily, tossing an arm over the back of the sofa. “That went pretty much how I thought it would.”
When he’d first spoken to Maisy, he’d been open to the idea that Sam could be their culprit. But the more he’d thought about it, the more his point of view had shifted. Because if there was one thing their boy had been very careful to do, it was mask his identity. It made no sense that he would suddenly be prepared to remove that mask.
Deke went on, “I wasn’t sure how Sam could have been lured to the café, but I was pretty certain he was set up.”
Blair gave a slow nod, her fingers absently doodling patterns on her mate’s nape. “I can’t see Sam being our guy. It seems to me that someone knew his routine and used it against him.”
Tate unfolded his arms, a muscle in his jaw flexing. “The fucker is playing games again.”
Luke idly drummed his fingers on Blair’s thigh, saying, “He probably expected Maisy to barge in there and make a scene. Sam would have then reported it to us. The situation didn’t unfold as our boy expected, but the end result was the same.” He looked at Deke. “He got your attention.”
Deke cricked his neck. “And I’m now supremely pissed off.” Later that evening, that same anger flamed in Bailey’s eyes when he brought her up to speed.
Straddling him on his sofa, she clamped her lips shut and shook her head. “I can’t believe this motherfucker. Does he not have anything better to do with his life?”
