Page 26 of Protected By Her Mate

She places hers on the table. “This one is a lease to a place in Chicago. Don’t suppose this could he ASHRA’s head office?”

Lifting more papers out of the file, I shake my head. “We have another lease for a building in Seattle, another in Los Angeles, and another in Houston.”

“Targets?” she asks.

“I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“They’re residential. So far, the only uniting factor in our targets are that they all belong to Paddington.”

She stares at me thoughtfully, then shakes her head. “They were targeted because the corporation is a shifter-owned business. We have proof that Paddington was hit, but I bet there are others. ASHRA is a shifter-hating bunch, why target one single shifter-owned company?”

Her logic is sound. “We need to find out who else has been targeted.”

“On it,” she says, pulling out her tablet.

“You have connections I don’t know about?”

“Lots,” she says breezily, her dancing eyes meeting mine. “But for this exercise, I’m simply searching for shifter-owned businesses across the United States that’ve recently been targeted by vandalism and hate crimes.”

Once again, I’m both amazed by her ingenuity and displeased at my poor detecting abilities when I’m around her. She distracts me, but I can’t bring myself to resent her for it.

While she searches, I sift through the rest of the papers from the file. Along with the leases and blueprints, there are profiles of people involved in ASHRA. All human, a few women, but mostly men.

I decide to take a page out of Charlie’s book and open my laptop on the table, seating myself on the floor across from her. One by one, I go through each of the profiles, searching social media and news articles.

An unsurprising picture grows out of my research. The humans involved hold deep anti-shifter prejudices. Some have been harmed by shifters, or had family members harmed, while others come from families with deeply held prejudices against anyone who is different, not just shifters.

Dangerous people.

“I’ve found something,” Charlie says, meeting my eyes. “Come here.” She pats the arm of the recliner and I heft myself off the floor, circling the table to kneel next to her.

“Look.” She rapidly shifts from webpage to webpage. “Human on shifter crimes, and general crimes against shifters were up by between 900 and 1300 percent last year in each of the cities we found a lease in.” She flicks to the next webpage. “When cross-referencing with a random selection of other communities, crimes toward shifters are either down or on par with the previous year.”

Our gazes meet. “ASHRA are a lot more active than we suspected.”

Her face reflects sadness. “There’ve been a few deaths too. Shifters killed in their place of business, as well as a few humans caught in the crossfire.”

“Bombings?”

She shakes her head. “There are a few suspicious fires, but the bombings are more recent.”

I rub my chin. It’s speculation that the crimes were perpetrated by ASHRA as they haven’t claimed any of them. The organization is trying to remain in the shadows, working on becoming more and more active, probably recruiting as many people as possible to their cause.

Charlie echoes my thoughts. “But how do we prove this is all connected to our warehouse?” She reaches for a paper, examining it, and I catch her thought.We need someone to go in undercover, like Greystone and Catherine. I would be perfect. A human….

“No!” I snatch her hand away from the file. “Absolutely not.”

She frowns. “Absolutely not what?”

I shake my head, trying to sort her thoughts from my own. She’s energized by the idea of infiltrating ASHRA to solve our case, confused by my reaction to the thing she didn’t say out loud, and her heart is hammering in giddy anticipation from my proximity.

In a moment of weakness, I allow my wolf to clear up the confusion. Gripping her face, I cover her lips in a plundering kiss, releasing all the desperation my wolf has felt from the moment we discovered our mate.

He’s urging me to drag her from the chair, which I do. I can taste her surprise as she tumbles over the side of the recliner, her booted foot hitting the table and sending it spinning, papers flying everywhere.

I catch her as she falls on top of me, her eyes wide with surprise.

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