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He hadn’t said anything else, and I was trying not to be the asshole who took that personally. Especially because it was totally my fault he hadn’t known this years ago.
I pulled into the parking lot across the bridge from Belle Isle, grabbed our lunch, and looped Anubis’s leash around my wrist. We walked along the sidewalk toward the bridge to Brown’s Island, which was largely deserted, since it was January and still fucking cold. I grimaced, hoping the pies would still be warm by the time we got across to the island.
Raj Parekh was sitting on the wide stairs coming down from the other bridge, a thick scarf wrapped around his neck and his hands stuffed in his coat pockets.
I set the bags of pies on the step next to him, and he reached inside to pull out one of the hand pies. He held it up. “What is it?”
“Chicken,” I answered. The brown stamp on the front had a kiwi bird on it.
“No kidding,” Raj replied, rolling his light brown—almost gold—eyes.
I shrugged. “I didn’t bother remembering,” I told him.
Anubis sat next to my feet, eyeing the pie in Raj’s hand.
That’s when I saw the tiger shifter’s nostrils flare.
“The fuck is going on, Hart?” he asked sharply, his eyes not leaving Anubis’s form.
“I told you I have a little bit of a shifter problem,” I answered, reaching into the bag and pulling out a pie that I knew was beef and bean, unwrapping it, then setting the pie, on top of the wrapper, on the ground. Anubis immediately began chewing on it, mostly ignoring the fact that a tiger was watching him like the massive predator he was.
Not that Raj would try to attack or eat him. Shifters are mostly more civilized than that, and Raj had more self-control than anyone I’d ever met besides Doc.
“Problem,” Raj repeated, deciding he was okay eating the chicken pie and slowly starting to unwrap it, although he hadn’t stopped staring at Anubis.
“He can’t shift,” I explained.
Raj continued to stare at Anubis, who had moved so that he could study the tiger shifter right back while still continuing to gnaw on the side of his pie. I took the opportunity to pull one of my pies out of the bag, not bothering to take my gloves off before unwrapping a corner and taking a bite.
“Do you know who he is?” Raj asked.
“If you mean, do I have an ID, then nope.”
“What do you know?”
“He’s the only surviving witness in my shifter kidnapping-and-murder case.”
Raj’s eyes widened. “Hart.”
“Withholding evidence? Tampering with an investigation? Fraternizing with a key witness?”
“For starters,” the Internal Affairs officer replied, his voice hesitant. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I told him the whole story—finding my not-so-furry friend in the dumpster, the vet, all the way up to our late-night second vet visit and the blood draw.
“What did he find?” Raj asked.
“Hasn’t called yet,” I answered.
Raj grunted in the back of his throat, then looked at the dog. “Did you see the vampire who killed the others?”
Chuff.
Yeah, I totally could have asked him that. And yes, I had realized that there were a variety of yes-or-no options available to me, had I wanted to actually interrogate my doggy witness. But even I recognized that forcing an interrogation on someone when they were essentially obligated to put up with you twenty-four-seven for the foreseeable future was an epic dick move.
I may be a dick, but even I am notthatmuch of a dick.
So I was more than happy to have Raj do it for me.
