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“Hi, Benton. What happened?” Violet crossed her arms over her chest like a protective sister.
“Kidnapped.” Both Opal and Benton turned to where the shifters had been lying on the ground. Both were gone. She was glad they weren’t dead, but then again, she didn’t want them coming back.
“Oh, my God!” Violet turned to the police officers. “We must add kidnapping to the list of offenses.” Violet pulled Opal by the elbow and Benton by the hand. She pushed her way through the cops, who spread apart like automatic doors.
Benton and Opal followed Violet, and the cops turned to follow her back into the building.
If Opal hadn’t just had too much happen to her and hadn’t prepared herself for the mess inside, she may have smiled at how Violet even managed to command police officers without saying anything.
Violet stopped them right before the door.
She let go of Opal and Benton and swished around. Concern filled her large brown eyes.
“It’s bad, Opal.”
“I’m sure it is. But we can fix anything.” Opal squeezed Violet’s hand.
Violet set her lips in a straight line and gave a curt nod. She turned and held the door open for the group to go in.
A cry of anguish slipped past Opal’s lips when her heel stepped over the threshold. Her hand flew up over her mouth as she took in the damage. Her tiger roared as she took in the intrusion.
“Oh, my,” she whispered. There wasn’t an inch of the office that Troy and Reba’s people hadn’t touched.
Furniture was shredded to the frames. Desk chairs were ripped in half. Metal desks were pounding in half. Wooden ones were splintered and broken.
Computers screens were cracked or broken through. There was electricity popping out of some of them. Other motherboards had been smashed on the ground leaving hills of computer parts strewn in random places.
Plants were overturned. Pieces of carpet were burnt, wet, or damaged in other ways.
As Opal turned, she could see her staff crying or shocked. They were scared and uncertain.
She whipped her head to Violet, whose eyes were also glassy with tears. “What did they take? They damaged everything. But they were looking for something too, right?”
Violet nodded and waved her over to Opal’s office.
That space was even worse.
It seemed like the shifters knew this was hers.
Opal gagged at the smells emanating from the room. Many of the scents were far too natural to be anything other than shifter fluids. Violet stopped her from going in.
“Don’t. You don’t want to. They took all your files.”
“Crap.” Opal looked around and stepped back from the door. “They didn’t get anything. I know why they thought they would. But I don’t keep those documents here.”
“Just be thankful they didn’t think to look at your house.” Violet shuddered and walked toward the group of people gathering around Opal.
She pulled the door closed. Some of her staff were shifters, and they could smell the stench, but there wasn’t any reason to try to block it as much as she could. As she surveyed the crowd, her sense of action took over.
“Okay, everyone. Let’s get outside so we can have a discussion.”
Opal could feel Benton at her back, and she was surprised at how happy she was that he was there. She turned to him and mouthed “Thank you” before following the rest of the group.
The conversation was one of the most difficult things she’d ever done.
After she pepped the staff up, Opal explained that they could work at other offices. She wanted to know what offices were closest to where they all lived, and Violet took the lead.
“Then there’s the price of getting things fixed.” The crowd groaned. Opal held up her hands. “We are insured, so they will cover the costs of a lot.” She looked over her shoulder at the building. “If not all of it.
