Page 25 of Handcuffed to the Bear

“He saved my life.” Avery set down the coffee cup; he’d lost his taste for it. “I’m going to look for their hunting grounds again.”

They still didn’t know where the Fallons took their victims: whether it was one place or a lot of places, private land or public. Their informant thought the Fallons owned private hunting land somewhere, but didn’t know where it was. So far, a search of property records had turned up nothing, just a handful of different vacation homes in assorted urban locations. If the Fallons did have some private land somewhere rural, they must have hidden it somehow, under a different person’s name or under the name of a company they owned. Trying to find it was like looking for a needle in a haystack—a Canada-sized haystack, at that.

But if Jack was there, he had to try.

Avery got up and lurched off to start digging through property records.

* * *

By early afternoon, he’d accomplished nothing other than finding a lot of places it wasn’t. And Jack still hadn’t called in. Shortly after Intern Mayhew brought lunch (with half the orders mixed up, but at least there was enough for everyone), Rosen leaned in to report that Eva Kemp and her team were back.

“Before you ask, Agent Ross wasn’t on the ship, and that’s all I know. They picked up our informant when he got off. Eva’s down in Interrogation with him now.”

Eva was an orca shifter. She looked every inch the predator: sleek, tall, and lethal, her long black hair pulled back in a severe braid with a single white stripe down the side. Avery found her looming over the lion shifter who had been sending them inside information from the Fallons’ organization.

“I told you, I don’t know,” he was saying as Avery slipped into the room as quietly as he was able. “I’m just doing routine security work, right? Hell, Mara’s on the outs with me anyway. Nobody tells me anything.”

Eva rested her fists on the beat-up metal table and added some extra threat to her usual looming. “Look, we know our guy got on that boat yesterday, and so did all of the Fallons. Today, our guy doesn’t get off, and neither do most of the Fallons. What did they do, jump out and swim?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you!”

Avery wasn’t sure whether to believe that, but he spoke up quietly. “If they did leave the ship at some point during the cruise, where might they have gone?”

The informant shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t seem to know much, do you?” Eva asked.

Avery said, “You told us earlier that you thought the Fallons had some private hunting land somewhere up north. Is there anything else that you can tell us about that?”

“I told you, I’ve got no idea. I just helped clean up after they got back.”

“Canada side of the border?” Eva said.

“Maybe. I kinda always thought it was pretty far. Sometimes they’d use a helicopter to get there. They had their own private one.”

Cho was waiting outside the interrogation room when they came out. “Anything?” she asked.

“Nggghh,” Avery said.

“Well, I came down to tell you there’s a big storm system tracking in from the Pacific. We’ve got access to a search and rescue chopper if we need it, but if the weather gets bad, we might be grounded.”

“All the more reason to move as fast as we can,” Avery said. “I need to talk to Stiers.”

He found her in the conference room. “Chief,” he said without bothering with niceties. “I think we need to bring in one of the Fallons. Any Fallon we can get a warrant for.”

“According to Mister Helpful back there, at least one of the sisters is still in Seattle,” Eva put in.

Stiers looked between the two of them. “If we do that, this op is well and truly blown.”

“It’s blown already,” Avery said.

“If they’re holding Ross somewhere, we may be tipping them off that we’re onto them. You know what that means as well as I do.”

“I know. It’s a risk. I understand that. I think we have to take the gamble.”

Stiers stared at him for a long time with her unblinking owl’s glare. Then she shook her head. “You’re his handler. You know him better than I do. And your instincts have always been good. If you think it’s worth hauling in one of the Fallons, we’ll do it.”

“I do,” Avery said, and prayed silently that he hadn’t just signed Jack’s death warrant.

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