Page 39 of Handcuffed to the Bear

This was something like the truth—but a very selective version of it. The SCB existed as part of an underground network of shifter infrastructure designed to handle their own problems without involving non-shifting humans any more than necessary. There were shifter doctors, social workers, therapists, and lawyers, as well as contacts the SCB had in other law enforcement agencies. Debi might not be facing a regular trial, but she probably wasn’t going to be locked up in a secret underground prison forever, either, let alone any of the more terminal options she must now be contemplating.

“Here’s the thing, Debi,” Avery said, leaning forward in his sympathetic-investigator role again, while Cho leaned back with her arms folded over her chest and smiled viciously. “I’m a pack animal too. Werewolves, right? We’re famous for it. So I know how much it knots you up to think about turning on your packmates—your pride.

“But what they did—what they’re doing now—is wrong. Very wrong. I think somewhere deep down, you know that, or you’d be out there with them, hunting.”

Debi refused to meet his eyes. Her nails drummed a tattoo on the arm of the chair.

“Do youevergo along with them?” Avery asked gently. “Or have you always used the company as an excuse to stay behind? Because itisan excuse, isn’t it? Someone always has to stay behind and mind the store. I think it’s probably always you.”

The tattoo on the arm of the chair stopped as she made a fist.

“It’s not because you can’t hunt. I’ve seen your lioness in action. You’d be fearsome out there. But I don’t think you like going along. You don’t like participating in their games. The only reason why you haven’t said anything is because you don’t want to break with pride solidarity. Isn’t that right?”

“They’re myfamily,” Debi spat between clenched teeth. “If they were your pack, what would you do?”

“Probably the same thing,” Avery said, quashing a dull and very old pain at the wordpack. He didn’t have one. Not really. “But there comes a point when you have to figure out whoyouare. What kind of person you are. And what kind of harm you’re willing to turn a blind eye to.”

There was a tap at the door, right on cue. Rivkah Rosen had been listening outside. She came in with an envelope in her hand, crossed the room quietly to place it in Avery’s hand, then retreated.

“What’s that?” Debi asked, her eyes tracking it. The envelope was a 6x9 manilla one. Not the sort that was likely to hold legal documents.

“I had one of our interns pick up a few things.” Avery spilled some photos into his hand and spread them out on the coffee table. Most of them were women, though not all. “Do you recognize any of these people?”

But the sharp intake of Debi’s breath was a giveaway.

“This is Romchang,” Avery said, holding up a photo of a dark-haired young woman, laughing with her arms around a much older woman. “She immigrated from Cambodia with her mother. She must have been delighted to get such a good job at a well-regarded company. Her mother reported her missing and tried to have her found, but what could an old lady do? She only spoke a few words of English and had no money, because she was disabled and dependent on her daughter. See, this is her mother here. She’s in a nursing home now, which interestingly enough is being paid for with an out-of-court settlement from a shell corporation your company controls. Almost as if she’s being paid off.”

He held up another photo of the elderly woman with a cat in her lap and a walker beside her. Debi tried to look away. Jen Cho took the photo from Avery’s fingers and shoved it in Debi’s face so she couldn’t turn her head without seeing it.

“And this is Mandy Bredon,” Avery said, holding up another. “Margay shifter. She has a daughter in foster care, did you know that? She’s gone through a lot of rough stuff, been on and off cocaine, hooked up with some bad-news boyfriends. But she was finally getting her life turned around. Three years ago, she failed to show up for a court-appointed meeting with her daughter. Your company said she had quit and left the state, incidentally violating the terms of her probation and ensuring that she’d never see her daughter again. Why would she do that? Why indeed? Her daughter is seven now, by the way. Look, here she is. Just getting old enough for sleepovers and mother-daughter days at school.”

He held the photo of a solemn, sad-looking little girl under Debi’s nose.

Debi slapped it away with her free hand, knocking it out of Avery’s hand. Cho got up wordlessly to retrieve it.

“Why are you doing this?” Debi demanded, jerking at the cuffs holding her to the chair. Her eyes glistened.

“Because I want you to see the human cost to what your family does,” Avery said. “These aren’t prey animals. They aren’t faceless and replaceable drones. These arepeople. Human beings, with families.”

He shuffled the photos back into the envelope, making sure Debi could see how many there were.

“From the look of things, you try to pick people who wouldn’t be missed. Recent immigrants. Ex-felons. The poor. People who either don’t have anyone to miss them, or don’t have anyone who has connections and money enough to hurt you. But they were still people. They were loved. They are missed. I could tell you a story for each and every one of them?—”

“Don’t!” Debi snarled.

“—and these are just the ones we know about. I’m sure there are plenty we haven’t found out about yet, because you were that much better at burying them, or that much more careful about picking someone who wouldn’t leave anyone behind to look for them. But each and every one of them is a person just like you—a person who was once a child, who was loved, who had a whole future to look forward to.”

“Stop!”

“And you know that,” Avery concluded, laying the envelope on the end table beside his end of the couch. “Or you wouldn’t be here, in Seattle, rather than wherever they’ve taken their latest victim.”

Debi drew a shuddering breath. Her uncuffed hand was curled in her lap, and she stared at it, head bowed.

“Debi, there’s one more picture I want you to look at.” This one didn’t come from the envelope. Avery retrieved it from his jacket pocket and held it out. The photo had been taken at a company picnic a couple of years ago. Cho, slipping around with her cell phone camera like the infiltration specialist she was, had caught Jack in the act of pressing a cold bottle of beer to the back of Avery’s neck.

It was rare for Jack to be so openly playful, and the mischievous grin in the photo was one that few people got to see. That was why Avery had asked Cho to email it to him, though he’d claimed at the time it was for blackmail material.

“This is Jack Ross. He’s one of our agents. He’s also my partner, and my best friend. Debi, I don’t have a pack, a pride, like you do. I don’t have a family. I lost mine a long time ago.”

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