Page 24 of What a Wolf Wants
She sighed and shut her door. “Thanks.” Okay, so she really needed to tell him she was sorry about biting him. If she hadn’t ever seen him again, she could have lived with not apologizing. But because they were doing so much together, she had to. “So about biting you—”
“It’s nearly healed up.”
Shoot, she should have asked him about his gunshot wound first thing this morning. “I apologize for biting you.”
He glanced at her and smiled. “I deserved it, truly. As soon as I didn’t smell any drugs in the house, I should have known we weren’t in the right place. And smelling your she-wolf scent added to the awareness that your house wasn’t where we should be.”
“But you were so sure that it had to be the right place. Your informant gave you the wrong address. Did you talk to him about it afterward? What if he was giving the bad guys time to escape?”
“Yeah, I talked to him. I wasn’t supposed to be working the next day, but I had to go and see where his head was at.”
“And?”
“He swears he gave us the correct address, but I had recorded the conversation, and he hadn’t. I could smell deception on him, and I told him I didn’t believe him. He got really nervous, wouldn’t look me in the eye, and was tapping his foot on the floor incessantly.”
“So he purposefully steered you to my house.”
“Yeah. I questioned him about why he had lied to us and sent us to someone else’s home.”
“I bet he had a story on hand for that.”
Ethan pulled into the parking lot at the Beach Breeze Café, and they both got out of the car. “Yep. He changed his story and said he always gets the two tree names mixed up. I asked him how much Kroner paid him to change the address. He swore Kroner hadn’t or we wouldn’t have caughtthe dude. I had to admit that was true. If Kroner had paid Ferret off, that meant Kroner would have known that my team and I would go to the wrong place and then head to their place, and Kroner would have packed up and moved already.”
Ethan opened the door to the restaurant for Charlene, and they walked inside. A hostess seated them and left menus with them.
The last time Charlene had gone there, she had loved it. Paintings of sailing boats and fishing nets, fake crabs clinging onto them, seahorses, and seashells everywhere were hanging on the walls, and a treasure chest was filled with candy at the cashier’s desk. A fishing boat was situated in the middle of the restaurant, filled with buffet food for breakfast. Fruit, hash brown potatoes, biscuits, cinnamon rolls, and doughnuts were set out, and scrambled eggs, sausages, and ham filled the warming trays and covered platters.
“So then why did Ferret lie to you, Ethan?” Charlene opened her menu.
“I asked if he thought we would tip Kroner off by hitting the wrong house, and then Kroner would hear about it and take off. Ferret was sweating like he’d been on a desert island, sitting in the sun on a blistering hot day. I suspected that he was afraid to tip Kroner off himself—the old adage that they kill the messenger coming to mind. While with our clumsy raid of your house, if any news source had learned of it, 911 reports from nearby neighbors, or just anything that clued them in, Kroner could hear about it and then alerting him of the raid would have come from us, not Ferret.”
“Aww, okay, that makes total sense.”
A server arrived at their table and they both asked for coffee. Then he left to give them a little longer to look at their menus.
“Though you caught Kroner and the other guy.”
“Right, so no new source or 911 calls had been made.”
Charlene glanced around the restaurant. “I didn’t have any interaction with anyone in here other than the server, as I recall. I don’t remember any customers who were in here at the time. I mean, some families were here, but I wasn’t paying any attention to them. I was on my phone looking at house listings though, so I might have missed if someone was watching me.”
“Well, I’m glad we could have breakfast together anyway. This is nice.”
“It is. I love the decor and the food is great.”
“So what do you want to do for breakfast? Buffet or order from the menu?”
“I want to try the Spanish omelet with crispy potatoes and toast,” Charlene said. “And sausages. Fruit comes with it.”
“Okay, I’m going to get the buffet. They have everything I want and more. It looks like they have a good lunch and dinner menu too.”
“Yeah, we’ll have to try it some other time. Would you like to take a walk along the beach and see the tidal pools with me after breakfast?” Charlene asked.
“Yeah, I would love to do that.”
“I should have asked you about your arm.”
“The teeth marks are nearly gone.”
