Page 84 of The Dog in the Alley

I didn’t have anything else but the job.

We ate in silence, the only sound the scraping of metal against ceramic. After a while, Taavi let out a soft, low whine, and I sighed.

I took their bowls and stood up, carrying them into the kitchen where I put them in the dishwasher. Taavi followed.

I ignored the pleading look in his mismatched eyes.

I headed toward my bedroom, pausing long enough to bid Raj goodnight, which he returned with a heavy sigh.

He didn’t stay for coffee in the morning.

18

Nothing happened for a week,and although you’d think by this point in my life I would fucking know better, I got goddamn complacent. Not that I thought everything was going to be hunky-dory, mind you—I’m not completely stupid—just… settled. A new upsetting normal.

The MFM case dragged on the way federal cases inevitably do, pulling old files, identifying the dead, dragging poor Ward and Ezra into it several more times as we attempted to ID victims or find bodies or hammer out the details of the pattern. Some of the cases went back years, and it was clear to both Raj and I that the FBI was miserably behind.

It was also clear that there were far too many places in this country where law enforcement would just as soon shoot—sometimes literally—an Arcanid as look at one.

So I was having a lovely time reinforcing to myself the fact that I was working in an occupation that thought I was about as desirable as rat shit in a city that continued to have protests every few nights during which people happily chanted that they’d rather see me dead than alive.

Does wonders for the self-esteem.

Taavi followed me around pretty much constantly—sure, he didn’t have a lot of choice at work, but even in the apartment, if I was in the kitchen, so was he. Bedroom, so was he. Living room… you get the idea. About the only place he didn’t follow me was the bathroom, but only because I closed the door, or I swear he’d have followed me in there, too.

I’d been doing some reading up on shifter cultures—with recommendations from Elliot—and I’d learned that canid shifters, as a whole, were, like their animal counterparts, largely prone to living communally. In other words, packs. On the one hand, that explained why Taavi was always—often literally—underfoot. If he’d decided I was the closest thing he had to pack, then he was going to stick to me. On the other, nothing I’d learned about Taavi Camal the man suggested he had those kinds of affiliations in his human life. No known family or next of kin. No known associates. Even the testimony of his coworker who had gotten him out of ICE detention had suggested he was a loner.

Why the fuck he’d decided I was worth following around, I had no idea. God knows I wouldn’t have chosen to follow me around. I’d have gotten the fuck out of here as soon as I possibly could.

Of course, he was still stuck in Xolo dog form, so that probably had a lot to do with it.

Rhoda Keller had called to give me updates on her progress—this compound seemed promising, this other compound hadn’t worked, she’d eliminated a third because it had resulted in the very unexpected and unfortunate demise of a lab rat… I tried to be grateful that she was trying, even if she didn’t seem to be making much progress.

I reminded myself that science took time, and I was asking her to create something completely novel in a matter of days. The fact that there was any progress at all was probably a fucking miracle—although the dead rat definitely didn’t make me feel good about rushing toward a chemical solution.

I just didn’t know where else to look.

So I did what I always did when I felt completely useless—I threw myself into my cases, putting in late hours both at the office and poring over files at home, Taavi snoring softly on the couch or the floor beside me as I worked on my laptop, linking up specific arresting officers with dead Arcanids across the better part of thirteen states.

Not all of them were bad cops, of course. A lot of them seemed to just be doing their jobs—maybe some had profiled an orc or a ghoul, but there wasn’t evidence that they’d killed them, either. But if even one of them—and I was suspicious of three—had used their badge as a shield for murder, it was too many.

Raj was pleased—well, as pleased as one reasonably could be, given the circumstances—but he also kept trying to convince me that I needed to be careful. He’d even gone so far as to say he’d keep an eye out for any openings in A-branch, although I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted to be a fed.

For one thing, I was pretty sure I was too much of a blunt asshole to pull it off. For another, I wasn’t entirely certain things would be any better if I did. Different? Yeah, probably. But better? That, I was skeptical about.

“Hart, go the fuck home,” Villanova ordered, standing behind me.

I blinked a couple times, then turned to look at my captain. “Sir?”

“Go home,” he repeated. “You’ve been here for ten hours, and I’m not paying you overtime to work for the US government.”

He wasn’t paying me at all to work for the US government—part of the deal was that they’d cover my salary for the time I was devoting to the case, naturally to the exclusion of all local cases. That, and I was salaried, so it didn’t actually matter how many hours I put in. I got paid the same thing regardless. Yay, capitalism.

But Villanova had a point. It was six, and I really should go home and suck it up and talk to my family.

Because it was Valentine’s Day.

Kill me.

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