I clenched my jaw for a second, drawing in a deep breath through my nose, then pushing it back out. “Please don’t provoke them into hurting you,” I said, finally. “They’ve already arrested Noah, and I really couldn’t handle it if they arrested you, too.” My voice cracked a little on the last few words, and Elliot shot me a guilty look.
“I don’t like it,” he said, but his tone was softer. “But I’ll try.”
“Thank you.”
For a minute,I thought Elliot was going to break his promise when one of the other deputies immediately cuffed me with plastic zip-ties as soon as we walked into the building. Honestly, for a minute I thoughtIwas going to break his promise, tingles spreading throughout my body and saliva filling my mouth. But I pulled my shit together, reminding myself that I had an alibi that was so rock-solid—and a thousand miles away—they’d have to let me go. Eventually.
They might try to hold me on conspiracy, especially if that’s the direction they were going with Noah, but there was no way they could put me at the scene itself. And since my phone records had most of my communications with Noah—and were mostly inane—they easily could have seen that we weren’t planning anything.
“I’ll call Humbolt,” was what Elliot finally said, although the words were a little thick and a lot growled, so I knew he was very close to losing his temper. And his control.
I nodded once, desperate to keep him calm. And alive.
“Call me when they let you go,” he said, then.
I nodded again. “I will,” I forced myself to say, looking into those fractured hazel eyes and trying to tell him silently that I loved him. Because saying it out loud in this context might earn me a beating I didn’t want to experience if I could avoid it.
A muscle ticked in Elliot’s jaw, but I watched him swallow, then nod.
And then they pushed me through into the back. They took me into one of the less-nice interview rooms, otherwise knownasinterrogation rooms, leaving me handcuffed, but at least not also attaching those cuffs to the table. They’d also left my hands in front of me, even if they had pulled the zip-ties way too tight.
I rested my arms on the surface of the table and looked up at the two deputies—the one who had come to the hotel and the one who had cuffed me. I had the absurd desire to snark about how this was an awful lot of fuss for a DNA swab, but I kept it to myself. Hart would have said it, but Hart had also gotten himself nearly beaten to death on more than one occasion. As much as I respected him, I had no desire to start emulating that particular habit.
A third person came in, masked and gloved and looking very nervous. The interesting part was that she was clearly not nervous aboutme, but kept glancing between the two deputies as though something about them put her on edge.
Given that the only reason she’d be swabbing me was that I was a shifter, the fact that she was more afraid of the two men—who were definitelynotshifters—than she was of six-three, two-hundred-fifteen-or-so pound me said something.
Something not very good. Especially considering I didn’t want to join Noah in jail. Now if me going to jail would get Noahout, I’d have made that deal in a heartbeat. But I knew that’s not how any of this worked.
I obediently opened my mouth and allowed her to swab the inside of my cheek.
And then she scurried out, sparing another set of nervous glances for the two deputies who had yet to actually introduce themselves. In my experience, that was a clear indication that they had no intention of thinking of you as an actual person.
I shifted in my uncomfortable plastic chair, knowing that I was going to be here a while if they were going to wait for the DNA test results.
I really hoped they were going to rush the DNA.
That would be a couple hours as opposed to, well,days.
5
Seth Mays
You can come get me now.
Elliot Crane
I’m outside.
I’d calledhim when they’d let me out of the extremely uncomfortable, but at least mostly clean, holding cell where they’d locked me around seven the night before. It had been a long night, since I hadn’t been able to get comfortable enough to even pretend to try to sleep for reasons that were both emotional and physical. They hadn’t charged or formally arrested me, nor did they let me call anyone until about nine, repeatedly telling me that we were just waiting for the DNA results to come back—I didn’t need a lawyer. I’d called Elliot at that point and told him I was being held overnight, but that I was otherwise fine, but that if he didn’t hear from me in the morning, he should call Humbolt again.
I was pretty sure that what they were doing to me was flagrantly illegal, but I also didn’t want to cause enough of a fuss that it provoked someone into actually arresting me orinventing some reason to make my life any more miserable than they already had. At least nobody had harassed or beaten me, although they hadn’t paid any attention to my dietary restrictions and had served me something that looked like a salisbury steak TV dinner on a tray, so I hadn’t eaten.
They hadn’t offered breakfast, either because they realized I wouldn’t eat it or because they didn’t give two shits about my health and welfare. Or both.
It was nine-fifteen when they officially released me and gave me my phone, keys, and shoe-laces back, and almost eleven by the time they actually processed me back out, complete with finger-prints (unnecessary, since those were already in the Virginia CSI database for elimination purposes, just like my DNA) and a second interrogation that gave them nothing more than what they’d already determined from the day before or my first so-called interview the day before that.
That’s when I texted Elliot. And then I looked up and saw him.
