“You got a warrant forthat?”
“Junior was living there, and the warrant covered searching his place of residence.” Smith almost sounded smug, but that wasn’t an emotion I’d ever seen on him, so I wasn’t sure. The man seemed too nice for smug.
“So you know who’s on the list, then.”
“We do—but being a Northman alone isn’t enough to warrant any sort of action. At least not yet.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning anybody can be a member of whatever they want, and just because they’re in the group doesn’t mean they’ve done anything illegal.”
“Other than be a bunch of species-ist shitheads,” I pointed out.
“Which, sadly, is not illegal.”
“They’re basically the Klan,” I grumbled.
“Which is also, sadly, not illegal,” Smith replied.
“It should be,” I grumbled.
Smith didn’t argue with me. “What I really want to know at this point is whether we can connect any of them to anything else in the area—or whether there are other chapters of Northmen out there. So I called the Feds. Roger drove a bunch of the samples and files out this morning.”
I was about to tell him I could have done that on my way to the airport, then realized that he and Roger—and probably Lacy—were all trying very hard to let me have time with my family.
It hit me, then, that these people cared about me—not like Elliot did, of course, or Noah, or even Marsh and Judy Hart, but they still cared. Even though they knew I was gay and knew I was a shifter (because that got out pretty quickly after I’d growled at Buettner last night—to the point where Roger was sending me pictures of doggy treats this morning), they still wanted to do things for me.
The very fact that Smith was giving me updates showed that he cared.
It made me suddenly feel like I actually had found somewhere I belonged, filling my belly with a warmth that was completely contradictory to what Smith and I were talking about.
“—hoping that will give us more to go on, to figure out if there are any other older Northmen still active or around. And hopefully the Feds will move on identifying them as a known hate group.”
“Will that do anything?” I asked, knowing I probably wasn’t going to like the answer.
“No idea,” came his reply, and I could see his awkward shrug in my mind. “But it will get them on a watch list, at least.”
“One can hope,” I remarked wryly.
“Darn right,” came his response. “I just wanted to give you a full update.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Merry Christmas!”
“Thanks, de—Gale. You, too.”
38
Elliot Crane
I love you.
Seth Mays
I love you.
You’re like five feet away from me, you know.
